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HERBERT T. FITCH
TRAITORS WITHIN
THE ADVENTURES OF DETECTIVE
INSPECTOR HERBERT T. FITCH
By
EX-DETECTIVE INSPECTOR
HERBERT T. FITCH
(Of the Special Branch, New Scotland Yard)
WITH 13 ILLUSTRATIONS
Publishers
since 1&L2
LONDON
HURST & BLACKETT/
LTD
First published March, 1933
Made and Printed in Great Britain at
The Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.
*933
CONTENTS
Book I
ANARCHISM
CHAPTER I
PAGE
The enemy among us. Plots against the Royal Family. Why Sir
Henry Wilson was shot. Poisoned chocolates sent to the Home
Secretary. The Special Department and its job . . .15
CHAPTER II
I wait on Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin rebukes me. What I heard in
the cupboard. What Lenin suggested for England. Some fun
with the Foreign Barbers . . . . . .21
CHAPTER III
Maxim Gorky comes to London. The end of Marie Derval. Leone
Povinelli pays the price. A private printing press. Karpovitch
hides in Pimlico. Plotting the Tsar’s death and the Kaiser’s
murder ......... 28
CHAPTER IV
When Lapidus and Hefeld ran amok in London. How the murderers
were trapped. The murder of Sir William Wyllie and Dr.
Lalcaca. The anarchists behind the murders . . . 3 5
CHAPTER V
The Gardstein murders. The armoury at the murderer’s house.
What it was meant for. Malatesta visits us. His history and
activities. A letter from Peter the Painter .... 42
CHAPTER VI
The man I fought outside Buckingham Palace. The Royal Box at
Covent Garden invaded. The man with the skull and cross-
bones
5
5 °
6
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
The outbreak of war. Communists shepherded into prison camps.
The stormy-petrels fly north-east. How Russia was destroyed.
Strikes at home. Germany follows Russia ....
CHAPTER VIII
I arrest Morel. An ex-M.P. arrested for distributing harmful
pamphlets. Communists try to sow sedition at the Front, and
what the soldiers did. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald at the Front .
CHAPTER IX
I arrest the Bolshevist Ambassador during the Second Russian Revolu¬
tion. Has the leopard changed his spots ? The Police Strike of
1918. General Macready becomes Police Chief. Soldiers at
the Yard .........
CHAPTER X
After the War. Anarchists among the “ demobbed ” meet with little
sympathy. We deport them but use their funds. Degradation
of Trebitsch Lincoln, and his extraordinary career .
CHAPTER XI
The man who brought money from Russia. The Chief Soviet
Courier comes to visit us. Anarchists who abuse the privileges
of the Press. The armoury at Acton. A loyal out-of-work. An
English Colonel arrested for sedition ....
CHAPTER XII
Good-bye to the Yard. Anarchism nowadays. Dramatic moves of
recent years. The Zinovieff Letter—the truth. The Arcos
Raid. Will England ever tolerate a Russian Dictator ? .
Book II
ESPIONAGE
CHAPTER I
How the Spy works. Spies in peace-time. Spy Clubs. Letter-boxes;
travelling agents; carrier pigeons. How information is sent over¬
seas. I act as bodyguard to the Kaiser ....
PAGE
56
62
69
76
83
90
99
CONTENTS
?
CHAPTER II
I arrest a Doctor of Philosophy during the Agadir incident. The spy
who asked a lawyer to help him ! The Spy School at Amsterdam
loses a pupil ........
CHAPTER III
Mr. Peterssen comes into action. Captain Grant makes a mistake.
The Navy sees it through. Exit Heinrich Grosse ; the girl he
left behind him ........
CHAPTER IV
Herr Steinhauer pays us a visit. When the War broke out. Preparing
for new duties ........
CHAPTER V
The Spy round-up of 1914. The Censor; how it worked and grew.
My work in East Anglia. Carrier pigeons fly seawards. The
Censor hands me some spy news. A first brush with the enemy
CHAPTER VI
Wiping out the score for Whitby and Scarborough. Janssen and
Roos go to the Tower. Harwich signals the submarines .
CHAPTER VII
The stamp-collector spy. The spy who played the violin .
CHAPTER VIII
Hahn and Muller gathered in. I am promised the Iron Cross! The
Plans I sold to Germany. Mr. Roggen is interested in torpedoes
CHAPTER IX
I meet some Women Spies. The lady who went to Scotland by car.
Mrs. Doctor Smith and her fishpond. I cross another trail .
CHAPTER X
Mr. Rowland goes to the Tower. Blindfolded with his lover’s
handkerchief. The tragic story of Sir Roger Casement
CHAPTER XI
The tragedy of Lord Kitchener. Spies who claimed the toll of the
Hampshire. Frank Greite is caught. The Indian Plots .
PAGE
106
112
II 9
125
132
I40
H5
151
158
165
8
CONTENTS
CHAPTER XII
The Movie-agent spy. His work before the War. A bottle of
ammonia. An indiscreet M.P. The prisoner who walked to
London .........
CHAPTER XIII
George Vaux Bacon and the pseudo-American journalist spies. The
man who taught Swedish drill. Germany’s nastiest spy shot
dead ..........
CHAPTER XIV
An ex-Lord Mayor degraded from knighthood. Fritz Duquesne,
the world’s master spy. Women spies have the last word.
Are there spies among us to-day ? .....
Book III
REFLECTIONS
CHAPTER I
Looking at crime to-day. The foreign criminal menace. How two
of them were caught. How to weed them out .
CHAPTER II
Secret societies in Great Britain. Ku Klux Klan members here.
Soho’s Italian secret societies. Chinese societies in Limehouse .
CHAPTER III
Modern blackmail. The cancer of modern society. All classes
involved. Personal experiences. Police precautions. The
remedy .........
CHAPTER IV
Society criminals. Youths and girls who try crime for a thrill.
Spongers; card-sharps; robbers. Varsity girl criminals.
Police difficulties. Nightclubs. .
CHAPTER V
Drugs in England. How they are run in. The quickest way to get
rich. Adventures with the dope smugglers. Suburbs reeking
with cocaine. Careless doctors. Inequalities of drug laws .
FACE
171
178
186
*95
202
208
215
221
CONTENTS
9
CHAPTER VI
Prostitution to-day. An increasing source of crime. How to stop it.
White slavery a real peril. Women criminals the worst .
CHAPTER VII
Modern murderers and their methods. The death penalty the only
safeguard. What murderers say about it. Too much leniency
dangerous. The Black Cap ......
CHAPTER VIII
The chemistry of modern police work. Test-tubes more feared than
handcuffs. Hanged by a pinch of dust. Analysis wonders in
peace and war ........
CHAPTER IX
The Force as a career. I was a Public School man on joining—the
Yard wants brains as well as brawn. Policemen who get £1000
a year. The private detective business. How brains have
helped the Yard. Latest methods of crime detection
CHAPTER X
Unsolved mysteries of the Yard. Murderers who are never found.
Why they escape. Organization needs. Keeping the Force’s
integrity. Temptations of a policeman ....
CHAPTER XI
Some Royalties I have met. King Edward and the wine-butler. Prince
Olaf sees the sights of London. Some good royal stories .
CHAPTER XII
The future of police work. Modern criminals and their punishments.
Are the gunmen coming here } Should policemen be armed ?
Bad times ahead if we have too much leniency .
FACE
227
234
241
248
253
260
265
ILLUSTRATIONS
Herbert T. Fitch
Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Houndsditch Murders
44
Herr Steinhauer
. 120
Haicke Marinus Petrus Janssen
. 120
Willem Johannes Roos
r 34
Josef Marks
i 34
Alfredo Augusto Roggen
146
Lizzie Emile Wertheim
. 146
Reginald Rowland alias George
Breeckow
. 160
Frank L. T. Greite
•
•
. 160
Leopold Vieyra alias Pickard
•
•
. 172
George Vaux Bacon
.
• •
•
. 172
Anton Baumberg (“Count Anton de Borch”) and the Seal
HE INVARIABLY USED .
180
BOOK I
ANARCHISM
"A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions."
CHAPTER I
The enemy among us—Plots against the Royal Family—Why Sir
Henry Wilson was shot—Poisoned chocolates sent to the Home
Secretary—The Special Department and its job.
I MMEDIATELY the word anarchism is mentioned,
a host of bluff gentlemen and studious ladies pooh-
pooh, or smile a superior smile. They will tell you
that anarchism is just an alarmist name for—in the case
of Russia—a people’s revolt against despotism, and in the
case of England for the activities of a few half-starved tub-
thumpers. In the course of a lifetime spent in the Special
Department of Scotland Yard, one half of my work has
been devoted to the study of anarchism and its prevention
in this country. As a policeman, I have learnt not to be an
alarmist, but to deal with irrefutable facts and logical con¬
clusions. The facts I will give you in this book ; facts
about the incendiaries, the political murderers, the Cheka
agents, the anarchist agitators with whom I personally
have come in contact and whose activities I can describe.
The conclusions I leave to you.
First of all, then, clear your minds of the delusion that
revolutionaries, as such, cannot exist in the free air of
England. They thrive on it! For half a century England
has been the dumping-ground and the sanctuary for all
sorts of extremists whose own countries have grown too hot
to hold them. Older readers will remember pre-War days
when the police in London, Manchester and Glasgow had
constant scuffles with mobs of communists directly inflamed
by the presence among them of Russians and Jews who
l 5
16 TRAITORS WITHIN
later became the leaders of the Russian revolutions. At
that time Scotland Yard received unending enquiries from
Russia, Spain, Italy and America concerning dangerous
agitators who had sought refuge here and who printed in
London for export inflammatory leaflets, copies of which
subsequently came back (with bitter marginal police com¬
ments) from St. Petersburg, Madrid, Rome or New York.
To-day, although we have tightened up our laws con¬
cerning undesirable aliens, we have just as many in our
midst. But to-day they are the dangerous kind—the
quiet kind who work instead of talking. Periodically, I
notice in one or other of the newspapers that Lord Trenchard
has made some subtle tightening of police regulations con¬
cerning unwanted agitators, or that somebody with a
common Polish or Italian name has been deported. Turning
back in my own cuttings books, I come across other men¬
tions of the deported; perhaps, in my own case-books,
there are notes of how I shadowed him years ago. In those
case-books and cuttings I have a number of entries ringed
in red ink. They are records of successful or almost-
successful anarchist outrages. And they are getting more
frequent!
I am not permitted to tell the full story of the events
which led to the shooting of Sir Henry Wilson. But
this at least I may now say, without contravening the
Official Secrets Acts, that the reason he was shadowed
and finally shot on his own doorstep in sedate Belgravia
was that he knew too much about revolutionary activities in
Ireland. At that time, Lord French’s car was like a tank—
even the windows were bullet-proof; and a number of
other famous soldiers and policemen never ventured out
of doors without an armed escort.
Scotland Yard took swift and decisive action before
the echoes of Sir Henry’s assassins’ running feet had died
ANARCHISM
17
away on the Eccleston Street pavements. Arrests were
made; papers were found plotting the deaths of a number
of world-famous people as well as certain famous Ministers;
and several men were deported shortly afterwards with the
promise that, if they were ever found again on English soil,
life-imprisonment would be the best they could hope for
after.
A year or two previously a double attempt at murder
was made in the interests of anarchism, and as a result we
nearly lost Sir William Horwood, then Chief of Police,
and the Home Secretary. Sir William, opening his corre¬
spondence at home one morning, found in a parcel an
ornate box of chocolates. The box bore no communication,
and was apparently from an admirer. The chocolates
looked very tempting, but the address on the label was
squarely printed, and the Police Chief wondered why such
pains should have been taken to disguise the handwriting.
Certain threats which had been made occurred to him.
Ten minutes later, those chocolates, under police analysis,
were proved to contain enough arsenic to kill a regiment!
It was a grave error to send such a thing to the Head of
Scotland Yard. Had it not been for that mistake, much
more alarming things might have resulted. But the
Special Department realized at once that the effort would
probably not be a solo one, and immediately telephone wires
began to hum. We knew exactly which famous persons
were suffering from anarchist displeasure just then; and
one of them, the Home Secretary, reported receipt of just
such another box of chocolates. They, too, contained
arsenic!
The chocolates, their packing, their box, the paper in
which they were wrapped, the laboriously printed addresses
were all examined under a microscope. Within a few
minutes of the end of the examination the Flying Squad
18 TRAITORS WITHIN
were out, and a cordon of official blue was closing in down
every street and alley towards a house whose tenant had
previously aroused suspicion. The arrest was tame enough
that time, and the man was proved guilty but pleaded
insanity. Actually, he was only a tool; other men of
whom nothing, unfortunately, could be proved, had
undoubtedly had a hand in the matter, and they were later
asked to leave the country. They were very lucky indeed
to get out of England so cheaply.
During the War an attempt was planned to murder
Mr. Lloyd George by means of poisoned arrows from a
blowpipe, but once more Scotland Yard was too quick for
the miscreants, and so the life of our greatest war-time
statesman was saved.
This chapter, which has been more in the nature of an
introduction and an outline of a few facts which show that
anarchism is by no means a fevered fancy, would be incom¬
plete without a few words on the Special Department of our
Detective Service—that Special Branch in which, from
1905, I lived and worked.
There has always been a delusion among extremists that
when a murder is committed under the guise of a “ political
protest ” the murderer cannot be punished except by
imprisonment. Anarchist agents here definitely instruct
their fanatical tools to this effect; and many such are ready
to buy cheap glory by bombing a Prime Minister or a
Home Secretary, and would certainly do so were it not
that Scotland Yard acts while the bombs are in the making.
In order to have a department specially trained and
ready to check the growing menace of political murders,
the Special Department was formed in the early ’eighties.
That it was necessary then is proved because, shortly after,
when Mr. Balfour’s carriage was rushed by a mob armed
with sticks and stones, only a ring of “ Yard ” revolvers
ANARCHISM
r 9
saved him from being murdered. Queen Victoria’s person
was always followed by seven armed men, but they were
once eluded and she was struck by a club; and the tragic
fate of Mr. Spencer Perceval years before while walking
in the House of Commons showed to what lengths political
fanatics would go.
Not nearly everything may be told, even to-day, about
my old “ shop.” But it was through the failure of its
equivalent in Austria that the Serajevo incident took place
and the world was plunged into the horrors of the War.
To-day, the Special Branch is guarding the Royal Family;
no statesman of note stirs abroad without the unostentatious
accompaniment of burly men in grey suits; night and day,
secret guns, aircraft and submarines are watched and
guarded; an impenetrable, unbribable circle is invisibly
drawn around vital political discussions, facts of which
might set the world on fire.
Have you ever seen a small news paragraph saying that
certain Government plans have disappeared ? Reading
between the lines, the detective knows that some foreign
power has struck us a terrible blow, that unofficial “ notes ”
are flying with alarming speed, and that the shadow of
War may be darkening our very gates. But always, some
days later, a few words appear saying that the plans have
been recovered. Only the Special Branch knows of the
swift, sure moves, the merciless activity of brains keener
than Sherlock Holmes’s, the silent arrests, perhaps the
world-catastrophe averted. No common picture-paper
“ sleuths,” these policemen whose names the public does
not know, but men whose lives may be forfeit at any moment
by bomb or knife, and without whom our Government
would be paralysed and nerveless.
Do not think I exaggerate. Since 1900 no less than
seven reigning European royalties and one American
20 TRAITORS WITHIN
President have been murdered, and many others have been
hounded from their kingdoms. Communism rules Russia,
Austria and Hungary, and is creeping across Spain and
Germany. Only one great nation still has its King sitting
secure on his throne; and that, by the Grace of God and
the unsleeping eye of the Special Branch, is England.
And even in England there are anarchist agents for ever
going restlessly to and fro in Limehouse or the West End
offering wads of crinkling notes or a “ shot ” of cocaine as
payment for shooting this statesman or bombing that
one. Even in England there are to-day a dozen people
who never know whether the man who approaches them
on the pavement may not hold a knife in the hand he
conceals in his overcoat, or that the morning correspondence
may not suddenly blow up the breakfast table and all who
are seated at it. There has been a sleepy silence lately,
and the Yard will try to keep it so; but in the nature of
things not many more years can go by without their peace
being shattered by the roar of a bomb whose manufacture
has in some way escaped our official notice.
CHAPTER II
I wait on Lenin and Trotsky—Lenin rebukes me for clumsiness, just
like a capitalist!—What I heard in the cupboard—What Lenin
suggested for England—Some fun with the Foreign Barbers.
E ARLY in 1905, two years after I joined the Special
Department, I was called into a little bare office at
Scotland Yard and told that a certain very famous
Inspector wanted to see me. He was turning over some
papers, and he nodded cheerfully to me as I entered.
“ Ever heard of the Foreign Barbers of London ? ” he
asked quietly. I shook my head, so he put another question.
“ Know anything about Vladimir Uljanoff ? ” I was
stumped again. He told me to sit down.
“ You’ll hear quite a lot about that young gentleman if
you live long enough,” he said. “ Listen. Some years
ago, his brother was shot in St. Petersburg for trying to
bomb the Russian Chief of Police. That made Vladimir
turn nasty; and he got sent to Siberia himself for trying to
improve on his brother’s failure. He has just escaped
from Siberia. He’s in London at this moment, and he’s
going to attend a trade meeting of the Foreign Barbers in
Islington to-morrow. Now that man’s dangerous, and
we’ve got to know just what he’s up to. I want you to go
along and find out.”
We went into details, and I discovered the rather alarming
fact that the meeting was to be quite a small one, and that
in no way could I possibly go disguised, for every man
attending it was a notable anarchist. I had been chosen
to go because I could speak four languages fluently; I was
21
22 TRAITORS WITHIN
then only a Detective-Constable, and I wanted promotion,
so I went off to see what could be done. The landlord of
the inn where the meeting was to be held proved to be a
loyal man enough, and he showed me the room where the
conference was to take place. In the wall was a cupboard,
very narrow and airless, and so small that only by cramping
myself almost double could I get into it. However, it
was the best thing there was; and, a quarter of an hour
before the “ barbers ” were due, I climbed into that awful
little press and the landlord shut the doors. His footsteps
died away, and I put up a short prayer that the anarchists
would not come prying into the cupboard before they
started to talk.
After a long wait, I heard two people ascending the
stairs, and they entered the room and began talking in low,
guttural Russian. Then one of them stood by the door;
and as other steps mounted the stair, he opened the door
a few inches and took from each as password the English
word “ Liberty ” before he admitted him to the room.
I counted twenty-four people in all, and then the door was
closed and I heard the lock click into place.
There was some shuffling while chairs were drawn round
the table, and then a deep, harsh voice called on Comrade
Max Muller.
“ In ten years,” announced the new speaker triumph¬
antly, after making various astonishing statements about
communist activities in Germany, “ the people will be
ready, and the cursed Hohenzollern will be a prisoner in
his own palace.”
I remember smiling as I heard the words; little did I
know then how nearly they would come true in 1918,
when the world’s greatest autocrat would be forced to flee
to save his life from his own people.
The harsh voice broke in impatiently that ten years were
ANARCHISM
23
long to wait. The next speaker was a Russian army officer,
who said that the Russian troops were willing to follow
any leader who showed strength, but that, although there
was disaffection among them, there was also personal love
of the Tsar, and that he advised delay in the proposed
revolution till more work had been done among them.
It was the first I had heard of the “ proposed revolution,”
and I listened eagerly.
There were other speakers who said little of importance,
and then one concluded his speech by saying that they
would like to hear the views of Comrade Boroff before
going further. And then the harsh voice began to speak.
“ No need here for me to keep up that disguise,” it said
scornfully. “ Boroff is a cloak—I am Vladimir Uljanoff! ”
I could hear short breaths, scuffling of feet and whisper¬
ing. Then the voice went on again. The man who was
speaking—the man the whole world afterwards knew as
Lenin the Dictator—was as merciless and as bloody-minded
then as his deeds afterwards showed him to be. While he
spoke, I cramped and crouched in my cupboard, and
listened eagerly to his burning words.
“ It must be bloodshed—bloodshed on a colossal scale.
My comrades here have advocated politics. I say politics
are useless to us. We must revolt, and when we revolt
there shall be no mercy. We shall think of our brothers
shot and hanged at the caprice of the nobles, or sent to
rot in Siberia. The Tsar, princes, dukes, police, civil
servants, shopkeepers—all must perish. In Russia first,
and then from one side of Europe to the other. It is the
bourgeoisie we must fear, in Russia, in Germany, in
England. When the day comes, they must perish, down
to the man who keeps a stall in the street! ”
That was the gist of his speech. There was a fierce
burst of cheering, and such was the passionate magnetism
TRAITORS WITHIN
24
of the man’s voice that it would have incited a multitude
to madness. Excited discussions broke out, fists were
thumped on the table, and in the general uproar I tried to
move a little to ease my aching limbs. And then I dis¬
covered a new factor. The air in the cupboard was so
horribly close, and so great had been the strain of my
position, that, as I tried to move, my head seemed to spin
and my body felt light and volatile. I pricked myself
sharply with a knife to prevent myself from collapsing.
The stab of pain revived me, but in reaching for the knife
in my pocket my foot slipped and came down sharply from
a joist on to the broken bottom of the cupboard.
Instantly the hubbub in the room was silent.
“ What was that ? ” said the voice of the German,
Muller. In that moment, it was indeed lucky for me that
Lenin and Muller had been all the time in disagreement.
“ The comrade’s nerves are, as I thought, a little
timorous,” sneered the Russian, “ that he turns so white
at the sound of a rat in the woodwork.”
There was a laugh, someone else said that these old inns
were full of rats, and conversation began again. Somehow
I managed to remain still for the rest of the time, and
finally they broke up, after arranging a meeting for the
following week at another public house in Islington. When
eventually I climbed out of that cupboard my back was
bent like a cripple’s and I had to sit down for a long time
before I could walk.
The next meeting was to take place on May Day—Labour
Day—and once more I was told to attend. But the room
this time had no convenient cupboard; the only way I could
see was to disguise myself as a waiter and actually serve the
anarchists with my own hands. Once more the landlord
was a friend of law and order; and when the day came, I
shaved off my policeman’s moustache (of which I was
ANARCHISM
2 5
very proud), took a napkin over my arm, and carried a
tray of drinks into the room.
There were twenty-eight men seated around the long
table, and the man at the head of it was respectfully addressed
as Comrade Boroff. It was my first sight of him—a smooth¬
headed, oval-faced, narrow-eyed, typical Jew, with a
devilish sureness in every line of his powerful magnetic
face. Beside him was a different type of Jew, the kind one
might see in any Soho shop, strong-nosed, sallow-faced,
long-moustached, with a little tuft of beard wagging from
his chin and a great shock of wild hair—Leiba Bronstein,
afterwards Lev Trotsky.
There were drinks to be served, and as I put them on
the table I accidentally knocked several copies of the
agenda and rules, which lay in a pile by Lenin’s elbow,
on to the floor, and then stooped in haste and embarrassment
to pick them up.
“ Clumsy fool! ” hissed Lenin, for all the world as
though he were one of the damned aristocrats; and terrified
at the sound of his voice the trembling waiter dropped his
napkin on top of the fallen papers. And as he picked them
up again, which is more to the point, he managed to
smuggle one into the folds of the linen and retain it. I
have always counted that bit of sleight-of-hand, done under
twenty-eight pairs of eyes accustomed to pit themselves
against the Tsar’s secret police, as one of the best things
I have ever done.
Ten minutes later, the paper was on its way to Scotland
Yard, and I was back again at my labours with the drinks.
And I must say that those anarchists could put away their
liquor like men! I listened carefully through the open
fanlight to all sorts of revolutionary speeches, in which
most of the speakers repeated with emphasis what I had
heard at the previous meeting; but with this difference,
26 TRAITORS WITHIN
that there was a definite leaning this time towards Comrade
Lenin's more cut-throat ideas of revolt. I made my notes
with more comfort, having only to stand on a chair and
apply my ear to the fanlight to hear perfectly. At the end
of the meeting I took a considerable risk by laying my
napkin on a copy of the minutes of the meeting and taking
it away with me, but fortunately no one noticed the loss,
each doubtless supposing that someone else had pocketed
the document.
The next meeting was held a couple of days later at a
public house in Great Portland Street, and once more I
was told to go. This time I was worried about my dis¬
guise, for the waiter who had been so clumsy in Islington
would certainly have been recognized. So I went along
to a certain famous theatrical wig-maker, had my hair
cropped and put on a fair wig, and had my face scientifically
altered so that, looking in the glass, I could hardly believe
that the reflection was really my own.
I did not dare to try to get any papers this time, but
I was in the room a good deal, and I overheard most of
what was said while I was outside it. That meeting was
an historic one, for at the end of it, after Lenin and Trotsky
had made passionate speeches, every sentence of which was
wildly applauded, a ballot was taken on the advisability of
an immediate revolution in Russia. Twenty-one members
voted for it and seven for its postponement.
After the results were announced, Lenin rose, in an
impressive silence.
“ Comrades of the Revolution,” he said, his voice shaking
with emotion, “ I have waited and served all my life for
this hour. My brother died for it. Within the next few
months, in Russia, we shall sweep out our oppressors on a
tide of blood. And then Germany, Italy, France, England
shall follow. In ten years from to-day, perhaps, the whole
ANARCHISM
27
world shall be free, and the people shall possess the
earth.”
Everyone knows the sequel. There was the great
Russian General Strike of 1905, when the whole nation
was cut off from the rest of the civilized world. Two
Russian battleships mutinied, there were mutinies in the
Army, and Government succeeded Government as the
Tsar was forced from one capitulation to another. The
Tsarist regime rocked to its foundations, and recovered
only partially that it might go crashing to its fall during
the Great War.
As far as I was concerned, the sequel was more pleasant,
for I was subsequently promoted to Detective-Sergeant,
and given an opportunity to rise still further. There was
one other echo a good deal later. A photograph was shown
me at the Yard of a man who was suspected of anarchist
activities. A policeman has always a pretty good memory
for faces, and after a minute’s thought I remembered his
name. He was one of the foremost revolutionary speakers
of the so-called Foreign Barbers. I went along to have a
talk with him, and pretty soon discovered that his comrades
in Russia had sent him over here with several thousand
pounds to aid the funds in this country.
The man was duly deported, with instructions not to
show himself on English soil again. Up to the present
he has not done so; if and when he does, either I or someone
else will recognize him. I have a definite feeling that he
will turn up again some day.
CHAPTER III
Maxim Gorky comes to London—The end of Marie Derval—Leone
Povinelli pays the price—A private printing press—Karpovitch
hides in Pimlico—Plotting die Tsar’s death and the Kaiser’s
murder.
T URNING again the first somewhat yellowed leaves
of my case-books, I find one of the first names of
revolutionary note that occurs there is that of
Maxim Gorki. But even before I came into contact with
the Prophet of the Revolution I had played a minor part in
one or two adventures which showed me that anarchism
was a vital force.
In April 1906, Mr. Balfour handed us some letters he
had received, demanding that he should immediately pay
£5,000 by registered post to an address in Chemnitz. The
letters were signed “ The Black Hand of Europe and
America," endorsed with a crudely executed sketch in
Indian ink of a hand holding a dripping dagger, and they
threatened murder within six months if the blackmail was
not paid. Swift action followed, both in England and
abroad; a twenty-year old compositor in England was
arrested and convicted, and the guard round Mr. Balfour
strengthened.
One other interesting case in 1906 was the arrest of a
Russian Jew suspected of being in league with an extremist
agent here and attempting to plot a bombing outrage.
In the court the old man—a queer, wizened, monkey-like
creature—broke down in tears, and startled everyone by
sobbing that he was the Wandering Jew, that for two
28
ANARCHISM
29
thousand years he had been tramping the world longing
to die, and that he had embroiled himself in all sorts of
anarchist attempts in the hope of being executed. He was
sentenced to a few days’ detention as a rogue and vagabond,
and crying out that he had told Christ to move on and
that now he must move on for ever, he was led away to
the cells.
It was early in May 1907, that I first saw Maxim Gorki
in London. There had been during that year a number of
meetings of anarchists whom the Yard had under observa¬
tion, some of them held in the parks, some in houses, and
one or two in churches on weekdays. And then it came
to our knowledge that a great congress was to be held
secretly in an East London hall, and I was detailed to
attend.
The meeting was again nominally a gathering of the
Foreign Barbers of London. In order to gain “ atmo¬
sphere,” I was made up for my part by a certain foreign
barber, not a member of the organization; and with what
the Yard had been able to tell me and my own knowledge
of German, Russian and French, I felt fairly safe as I gave
the secret handshake at the door and passed into the
congress hall. Gorki was already on the platform—a
moderate-sized man, very white-faced, with greeny-grey
quick eyes, a dark brown moustache and greying hair.
Other speakers climbed up beside him, and finally the doors
were closed and a couple of burly guards stood by them.
Gorki began to speak. In a dreamy tone, he told of the
sufferings of exiles in Siberia and of terrified peasants in
Russia. There were among his comrades, he said, many
who advocated bloody revolution. But he was for milder
measures. Only world censure could come of any attempt
to murder the Tsar and his family. They must be peace¬
fully deposed.
30 TRAITORS WITHIN
The hall filled with shouts and hisses. A big, shaggy
man sprang to his feet on the platform and began to sing
a deep, thrilling dirge. Other voices joined; soon the
whole hall was throbbing with music. It was the forbidden
funeral anthem for executed nihilists and Siberian exiles,
and so instinct was it with hate and determination that I
shivered.
A short, square, rough-headed man was on his feet on
the platform, his piercing eyes darting over the hall.
“ Comrade Trotsky! ” went the whisper from mouth to
mouth. It was indeed my anarchist acquaintance of two
years before. And he at least was thirsty for blood. He
snarled as he spoke; his big hands clenched and shook.
Other speakers followed; eighteen-year old girls with long
black plaits were the most bloodthirsty of all. They had
lost fathers, brothers, lovers, mothers. When the meeting
ended, I heard for the first time the singing of the “ Red
Hag.”
It was at this time that I was called to a Pimlico lodging-
house where a suicide had just taken place, and I saw there
another sidelight on anarchism. A young woman lay
crumpled on the floor, a bullet through her head and a
revolver clutched in her hand. Examination of her papers
proved beyond doubt that she was Marie Derval, known
and feared in Russia as Helene de Krebel. In her short
life she had first become notable through her marriage,
when still a young girl, to Tscherkesoff, the famous
Russian agitator. This was an anarchist marriage, to be
dissolved at the will of either party. But Marie, after
faithfully serving the anarchist cause for a year, was deserted
by her “ husband.” She had never expected that her
love would be scorned.
Mad with rage and hate, she went straight to the Tsar’s
secret police, taking documents which condemned Tscher-
ANARCHISM
3i
kesoff and many of his friends. There were hangings in
St. Petersburg, but her “ husband ” escaped to America.
Although no one could prove that Marie had turned
traitor, many suspected; and to force her hand she was
chosen to assassinate a famous Russian General. Realizing
that the game was up (she had been hoping to lure Tscher-
kesoff back to Russia), she went to the police, exposed a
number of anarchist plans, including an elaborate plot against
the Tsar’s life, and then herself fled to America. She
shadowed her betrayer through the United States, England,
France, America and France again. But ever closer to her
own heels were the avenging bloodhounds of the Revolu¬
tionaries.
In Paris, she went out to try to shoot Tscherkesoff,
missed him, and returned to find that three men had called
at her flat, and promised to return later. Without even
waiting to pack, she fled to London. A last passionate
love-letter to her “ husband ” was still among her papers
when I found her. Whether she still loved him or was
merely trying to lure him also to death, whether she had
killed herself in fear of her pursuers or in despair of regaining
her lost love, no one ever knew.
Towards the end of the same year I took part in a raid
on a basement in Shepherd’s Bush. The gentleman who
owned that basement had been known to us and patiently
watched for fourteen years; he was famous as the secretary
of a revolutionary society. There had been many secret
meetings in that cellar of his, and more than one Siberian
refugee had been sheltered there. But until a few days
before our raid he had not actually contravened British law.
Then, however, we found a very workmanlike little printing
press, and also quite a notable haul of books inciting
Russian peasants to revolt, Russian soldiers and sailors to
mutiny, and so on. Our man himself was not quite quick
TRAITORS WITHIN
32
enough in his attempt to escape from the country, and
suffered accordingly.
It was in the January of 1907 that the next case of
anarchist murder took place. A young Italian, Leone
Povinelli, was found one morning on Plumstead Marshes,
a foreign revolver by his side and a hole in his forehead.
He was known to have been connected with an anarchist
organization in London; otherwise he had no troubles,
was a cheery youth, and had enough money for his need9.
We could not bring home the crime to his murderers, but
a good deal of suspicion pointed to two men who had left
the country on the night the murder took place. Com¬
munist organizations abroad, however, are too intricate
and widespread to give much chance of bringing home any
serious crime to them, once their members leave England.
The next revolutionary agent with whom I came in
touch was a man whose name at that time was known
throughout the world. Early in 1907 this man was chosen
by ballot to assassinate General Bogalieff and his staff,
and he did it with cold-blooded ferocity. He was captured
and tried in Russia, and his comrades served every judge
in the case with a death sentence to come into effect if the
murderer was condemned. The judges were afraid, and
temporized by sending the murderer to Siberia, but the
death sentences were carried out just the same on every
one of them!
On April 12th, as the prison wagons dragged their
way across the steppes towards the Siberian mines, the
prisoner swallowed a powerful emetic, and shortly after¬
wards was judged too ill to travel. A small group of
anarchists, disguised as a relief party of soldiers, took over
the guard of the wagon in which he was placed, and secretly
cut the legs of the horses drawing it, and rubbed camphor
in the cuts to make the horses limp. This wagon, with
ANARCHISM
33
the disguised “ guards,” dropped behind the rest; the driver
was murdered, and the political prisoner and his friends
headed for Japan with a fresh relay of horses left some
miles back along the trail.
But secret Tsarist agents were on their tracks, and they
fled from Japan through the East to England, where for a
time this man, whom we will call Karpovitch, lay hidden
in the heart of Pimlico. I saw his landlady and searched
his room to make sure that he was the man we suspected;
but he never came back to that address. The landlady,
who said her lodger was “ a nice, quiet gentleman, very
regular with the rent, rather tall and very afraid of
strangers,” reported that two foreigners had called the
night before my visit, and been shown up to the room he
occupied. She was certain that he was in there, having
heard him moving about a few minutes earlier, but when
she opened the door the room was empty. The visitors
wanted to wait, but the faithful landlady would not trust
them, and threatened to call a policeman. Finally, they
went away; and Karpovitch was never seen again, as far
as I know. The landlady told me he had a watch-chain of
which he was very proud, and which seemed to her to be
made of little bullets. That identified my man without a
doubt; for Karpovitch always wore a chain made of the
revolver bullets with which he had murdered General
Bogalieff and his staff. The bullets had been strung on
a silver wire by a friend in St. Petersburg who paid the
penalty of his action with his life; and Karpovitch swore
that he would always wear the chain till he could use the
bullets from it to destroy his friend’s slayers.
In the years 1906 and 1907 London seems to have been
the world’s storm-centre of anarchism. Hardly a month
went by without one or other of the recognized Russian
leaders seeking refuge there or coming over to address a
TRAITORS WITHIN
34
meeting of the more important comrades. More mild
in their views but equally earnest, famous people in England
were successful in attracting enormous attention to them¬
selves by lending their names to various socialist causes:
a well-known peeress wrote from the Ritz Hotel, sending
£15 to a workers’ organization; a distinguished author’s
photograph appeared everywhere bearing the caption—
“The Dramatist of the Movement”; and the Special
Department hurried to and fro, searching houses, collecting
evidence, listening to incendiary speakers, and trying to
treat the Jews, Russians and Italians who came over here
to stir up strife and unhappiness in our peaceful land as
leniently as possible, while still rendering all their activities
impotent.
CHAPTER IV
When Lapidus and Hefeld ran amok in London—How the murderers
were trapped—The murder of Sir William Wyllie and Dr. Lalcaca
—The anarchists behind the murders.
E ARLY in 1906, three notable anarchists fled from
Russia to escape what was then known as “ Stoly-
pin’s Necktie,” a slang term for the punishment of
hanging, which M. Stolypin was then freely dealing out to
agitators in St. Petersburg. As always occurs when a
communist of note moves from one place to another, the
Yard was informed; but as it happened, the fugitives went
first to Paris. The next thing the world heard of them
was that, on May Day (Labour Day) 1907, they had made
an abortive attempt to assassinate the President of France.
It was one of those curiously just cases when a would-be
murderer was almost literally hoist with his own petard.
The three men, Peter and Jacob Lapidus and Paul Hefeld,
were skulking along a boulevard where the President’s
coach was expected to pass. Suddenly, there was the roar
of an explosion, Jacob Lapidus was flung to the ground,
Hefeld driven staggering backwards, and Peter Lapidus
literally blown to pieces by the premature explosion of the
bomb in his pocket. The two accomplices, running into
the crowd that gathered, escaped the gendarmerie and fled
to a hiding-place in the Latin quarter.
In the January of 1909 the career of these two men
was terminated when they paid the penalty of their violence
in this country.
A messenger from a Tottenham factory was sent one
35
TRAITORS WITHIN
36
morning in a car, driven by a chauffeur, to get £85 in gold
and notes from the bank for payments to employees. He
got the money successfully, and was just alighting from
the car with it outside the premises of his own firm when a
burly, dark-faced young man jumped at him from the
pavement, knocked him down and snatched the bag of
money. It was Jacob Lapidus. The man turned to run,
but in a moment the chauffeur ran at him and flung his
arms about him. Had he been unarmed, that might have
been enough, but he immediately brought down a heavy
revolver butt on the chauffeur’s head and sent him to the
ground.
A gas stoker named Smith who was approaching, saw
the struggle and its termination, and although he was
threatened with the business end of the revolver, struck at
Lapidus with his fist, but missed him. Then Lapidus
lost his head, and fired at point-blank range at his new
attacker. The bullet went through Smith’s jacket without
even searing him, and Lapidus, now joined by Hefeld,
raced away along the pavement, followed by a couple of
men and a boy.
Another factor came into the drama. A passing car,
seeing the chase, joined in and was overhauling the bandits
when Hefeld turned in his tracks and sent a bullet smashing
through the windscreen. The driver swerved wildly, but
continued the pursuit. Then, when he was only twenty
yards behind them, both men turned and fired a volley
of bullets, which, although missing the driver, disabled
the car.
The shots had brought a policeman, P.C. Tyler, from
point duty, and he led the race after the two men, who were
by this time not far ahead, still stubbornly carrying the
bag of money. P.C. Tyler paid for his bravery with his
life, for Lapidus, hearing feet overtaking him, turned
ANARCHISM
37
suddenly round and from a distance of about four yards
shot him through the neck.
At this juncture, shocked by the policeman’s fall, the
pursuers might have fallen back enough to let the men
escape, but for the fearlessness of a boy, Joseph Joscelyne.
This lad closed in on Hefeld, who was lagging and running
very heavily, and the men behind him, not to be outdone
by a boy, joined the chase again. But Hefeld also was
armed; Joscelyne, reaching out, touched him on the back
as he ran, and Hefeld, turning in his stride, put a bullet
in his brain.
This time there was no hesitation. With a roar of fury,
the crowd came pelting at the murderers’ heels; Lapidus
had disappeared ahead, but this man at least should not
escape. Suddenly Hefeld—he was only twenty-one and
absolutely maddened with fear—saw a policeman ahead
of him, heading him off. He turned desperately and tried
to climb a fence into a garden beside him, but his breath
was gone and he was exhausted. He slipped, fell on to the
pavement, saw the policeman jumping at him, turned his
revolver to his own forehead and shot himself. He was
still alive when he reached hospital, but died the same night.
Meanwhile, I was on the trail of Jacob Lapidus. A
police cordon had been drawn round the district in which
he disappeared, and I made various inquiries about the
two men and their mode of living. It was easy to find out
that they had been connected with various anarchist clubs
in the neighbourhood, and before long I had identified
them as the men who had escaped from Paris two years
before and come under false names to England.
That evening police knocked at the door of a Waltham¬
stow cottage, and very warily prepared to enter. There
was no reply, so they knocked again. As if in answer,
there came from within the sound of a revolver shot, a
TRAITORS WITHIN
38
grunt and a scuffle. The shot was not fired through the
door, which was locked. The police forced an entrance.
A paraffin lamp was burning in the little bare room; on
the floor, in a crumpled heap, lay Jacob Lapidus, anarchist,
thief and murderer—dead by his own hand.
Once more, these men were tools of more cautious foreign
agitators who were really working for revolution in this
country. Everything pointed to the fact that the men
had been, in effect, blackmailed by threats of exposure in
connection with their past crimes, and ordered to attempt
to seize the messenger's bag of gold, which was then
to be handed over to the anarchist society which was putting
pressure upon them. Money was urgently needed to pay
wages to certain agents; the fact that the lives of Lapidus
and Hefeld were lost in the attempt was nothing to the
men really responsible. Unfortunately, here again, we
could not bring home the blame to the cowards who should
have suffered.
One hot summer afternoon in 1909, an “At Home”
was held at the Imperial Institute, South Kensington, and
a number of people interested in reforms for India attended.
After it was over, two of its most distinguished visitors,
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir William Hutt Curzon-Wyllie,
K.C.I.E., C.V.O., aide-de-camp to Viscount Morley (who
was then Secretary of State for India), and Dr. Cawas
Lalcaca, a Parsee of considerable influence in India, were
descending the broad stairs of the Institute together,
discussing the events of the afternoon. Sir William was
notably like Lord Curzon, for whom he was sometimes
mistaken.
Lady Wyllie had gone to get her wraps. Unnoticed in
the bustle of departing guests, a young Indian student ran
suddenly up the stairs towards the two descending men.
An attendant called some unintelligible warning, but before
ANARCHISM
39
anyone could move the student had whipped out a revolver
and fired all six chambers at point-blank range at Sir
William’s head and body. One bullet entered his eye,
another went beneath his other eye, and one pierced Dr.
Lalcaca in the side. Both men collapsed on the stairs, and
the student, swiftly turning the revolver muzzle against
his forehead, pulled the trigger. It fell with a click; the
magazine had been emptied.
Guests on the stairs turned, shouting, and in a moment
the murderer was fiercely gripped in a dozen pairs of hands
and his weapon torn away. The horrified onlookers bent
over the fallen men, but their help had come too late.
Sir William was already dead—had, indeed, been killed
instantly; and Dr. Lalcaca, although he was still breathing
when they got him to St. George’s Hospital a few minutes
later, expired almost immediately afterwards.
Meanwhile, the student began some smiling explanation,
but was roughly shaken into silence. Then came the
crowning tragedy of the affair. Lady Wyllie, returning
with her wraps, saw someone lying on the stair. She had
heard the shots, and guessed that murder had been done.
She ran to the side of the prostrate figure, anxious to lend
any aid she could.
“Oh, the poor man!” she cried pitifully; and then
suddenly realized that it was her husband.
A number of Indians who were present broke down
completely and wept at the scene. Lady Wyllie was
assisted away, and the young murderer, still complacent,
was given in charge. On his way to the cells, and later
again at his trial, he was perfectly composed. He gave
the name of Madan Lai Dhingra, stated that he was a
Hindu, and that he had killed Sir William in mistake for
Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who, he said, was “ an enemy
of India’s freedom.” He claimed coolly that he had made
TRAITORS WITHIN
40
“ an honest mistake,” and that in any case the murder
was “ a political misdemeanour,” for which the only punish¬
ment that could be awarded was a term of imprisonment.
Never have I seen so confident a murderer.
The horror which all England felt at the outrage was
deepened by facts which I was forced to mention at the
trial. Dhingra’s two brothers had both been students in
England some years earlier. Hearing that their brother
was getting into the company of Indian agitators and
political extremists connected with Krishnavarma, the
famous exponent of political murder of pre-War days,
they had actually written to Sir William, knowing his
sympathy with Indians and his readiness to interest himself
on their behalf, and asked him to try to help the young
man. Sir William had made a number of inquiries as to
his whereabouts, but had failed to discover his address,
and a letter asking for more particulars was actually in the
post when the boy he wished to help put two bullets
through his brain.
The trial was a dramatic one. I remember to this day
Dhingra’s dark, smiling face as he reaffirmed that “ his
comrades ” had assured him that he could not be hanged
for his crime. As the hours wore on, and the hard eyes
of the jurymen considered him, he grew a little nervous,
and drummed his slender fingers on the side of the witness-
box, while he looked sharply and nervously about him.
He put up no defence except that he had committed a
political crime, but at the last moment certain influential
people in this country persuaded his counsel to enter a
plea of insanity, at which the prisoner smiled broadly. The
idea was a good one, but it did not save him.
When the foreman of the Jury had announced the
decision and the Judge assumed the Black Cap, Dhingra’s
face went sickly pale. “ But this is murder, honoured sir—
ANARCHISM
4i
murder! ” he gasped painfully, as if he could not believe
his ears. A few days later, public notice of his hanging
was posted up as a warning to those who had deceived him
and egged him on, and also to those poor dupes like him
who let themselves be used to do tasks which the instigators
fear to do themselves.
One of the most regrettable features of political crime
is the way in which anarchist leaders swindle and lie to
coloured men, in the hope of making them their instruments.
An Indian or Egyptian in England feels a certain racial
uneasiness and embarrassment in this country, and when a
revolutionary agent slyly stirs up those feelings till they
become a festering sore, and then flatters and kow-tows to
him, he is easily led on to “ strike a noble blow for the
cause of freedom,” as the agitator puts it. Any sort of
plausible lie about outrages in British colonies is trotted
out by the tempter, and the victim is persuaded to drink
quantities of cheap whisky under the pretence that it is a
sociable thing to do. Natives cannot stand intoxicants in
quantity, and soon, between alcohol, adulation and inflam¬
matory sham-patriotic sentiments, the coloured man is
ready to do anything his “ friends ” suggest. And then
the usual thing happens—the miserable instrument suffers,
and those who instigated the crime and who are totally
morally responsible titter and rub their hands and go looking
for another coloured fool who can be similarly used.
CHAPTER V
The Gardstein murders—The armoury at the murderer’s house, and
what it was meant for—Malatesta visits us—His history and
activities in connection with Great Britain—A letter from Peter
the Painter.
I HAVE mentioned in my last chapter that robbery
was commonly resorted to when anarchist agitators ran
out of funds in this country. To these men, any form
of violence or law-breaking seems to give satisfaction;
they appear to suffer from a kind of inferiority-complex
which can only be satiated by committing an outrage
against the laws they affect to despise. In the same way,
small boys are apt to put their fingers to their noses when
the schoolmaster’s back is turned. In the December
of 1910, there was a very flagrant case showing the
anarchist’s callousness of human life and rat-like readiness
to turn and bite when disturbed at his nefarious activ¬
ities.
A policeman on point duty, noticing that the door of a
Houndsditch shop had been forced open, blew his whistle
and entered. Three burglars came from inside and ran
at him, knocked him down and escaped to the street, but
found two other constables coming up, one from each end
of the street. The thieves were trapped, and after a swift
look round, they ran a hundred yards towards the more
distant of the two officers and then suddenly disappeared
into a house. The constable who had been knocked down
was now on their trail and the three met outside the door
into which the fugitives had disappeared. The door was
42
ANARCHISM
43
locked, but the lock was soon broken in, and the officers
entered the pitch-dark passage.
Next moment, a fusillade of shots rang out, and all three
constables fell dead, shot at point-blank range by a Mauser
automatic revolver. Having made sure that their victims
were dead, the authors of this cold-blooded outrage gathered
together everything they thought could incriminate them
and fled from the house.
The case was immediately put into the hands of Superin¬
tendent Wensley, under whom I was then serving, and
who was one of the greatest detectives the Yard has ever
known. An examination of the house where the murders
were committed, 9 Exchange Buildings, Houndsditch,
gave us some remarkable clues. In an upper room was
a cylinder of gas weighing half a hundredweight, whose
contents were evidently used by the anarchists in the
preparation of tear-bombs. There was also a very complete
and modern burglar’s equipment, including modern jem¬
mies, saws, skeleton keys, nitro-glycerine for blowing in
safe-doors, drills, clamps, punches, braces and bits, and
augers made of specially tempered steel. The outfit could
not have cost much less than ^100 to make. More impor¬
tant still, there were clues that led us to believe that the late
tenant had belonged to an East End Lettish Anarchist
League then in disrepute because it had come under
suspicion in connection with the recent Tottenham outrage
in which Lapidus and Hefeld were concerned.
Enquiries at this League elicited the fact that several
members had disappeared suddenly on the night of the
murder. Levi Goldberg (or Gardstein) and three other
wanted men were missing, and the whole organization of
the Yard was put on to discover them. They were formerly
sailor-smugglers, and for a time it was feared that they
might have stowed away aboard some outward-bound
TRAITORS WITHIN
44
vessel from the Pool. A number of lines of enquiry were
followed up; some ended in blanks, but before many hours
had passed, three of the men were detained by the police,
while the fourth, Gardstein himself, who it was then
believed had actually fired the shots, had attempted to take
his own life, and died of his injuries just prior to his arrest,
at a little house in Grove Street, Stepney; and when we
searched that house, we received a real surprise that such
a place could have been equipped under our very eyes
and without our knowledge. For the place was a veritable
armoury; it contained weapons of all descriptions, and there
was not the slightest doubt that the Houndsditch murders
had put a premature end to a plot for more armed raids
on property in the heart of London. At that time, and
for months previously, there had been a suspicious gathering
of foreign agitators in the metropolis, and though they
were under police supervision, it appears that they contem¬
plated similar coups. W r ho Gardstein really was we did
not discover. Like most other anarchists, he had a confusing
number of aliases; but his death was certainly a great blow
to anarchist hopes in this country, for shortly afterwards
most of the other known agitators went abroad again.
At his Stepney house, we discovered numbers of chemi¬
cals and explosives such as nitric acid, sulphuric acid,
nitro-glycerine, glass bottles and retorts similar to those
used on the Continent for bomb-manufacture, and several
privately printed books giving detailed instructions on the
manufacture of infernal machines and bombs, with pencilled
marginal notes in the dead man’s hand that left not the
least doubt of his own recent activities. There was also a
cartridge belt containing 150 dum-dum Mauser revolver
bullets (the soft-nosed variety which spread as they strike,
tearing a gaping hole in their victim, and which are expressly
forbidden by all civilized war conventions), over 600
ANARCHISM
45
ordinary loose cartridges, some with the noses notched to
make them spread like dum-dums, quantities of daggers,
knives and old Mauser rifles, and over a hundred
revolvers.
A most interesting sequel to this case was that, a week
or two after the outrage, a letter was received by a famous
and reputable London newspaper, condemning the
murderers in unqualified terms, and saying that the writer
had had nothing whatever to do with the people responsible
for the outrage, and only trusted that they might be brought
to justice. That letter was signed “ Peter the Painter/'
It was proved beyond a doubt to have been genuine, by
means of a microscopic examination of the signature, which
was compared with an authentic one. The letter had
no address on it, but bore a Russian stamp and
postmark.
The case had another sequel, by reason of which I
crossed the trail, for the first and last time in my life, of
the famous Enrico Malatesta, Sicilian Count of ancient
family, uncompromising anarchist, and at that time said
to be leader of a powerful group of anarchists in this
country. The cylinder of gas found by the police at the
Houndsditch house was freely alleged by certain news¬
papers at the time to have been supplied by Malatesta.
Actually, those rumours were quite unfounded; but they
grew up because we had instructions at the time that
Malatesta was believed to be in England, and that we
must see to it that his movements were above suspicion,
as he was generally believed to be a very dangerous
man.
All his life, this strange nobleman had been a stormy
petrel. Heir to great estates in Sicily, he had early become
a fanatical disciple of communism in its better sense, and
was genuine enough to divide up his estates and arrange
TRAITORS WITHIN
46
for their administration entirely for the benefit of the
oppressed peasants who lived on them. Thereafter, he
had travelled all over the world preaching communism
and plotting for an imaginary ideal of equality. Constantly
in trouble with the forces of recognized authority, and
dangerously outspoken at abuses of anarchist principles
by unscrupulous agitator leaders, his liberty was always
threatened and even his life was unsafe. But luck was with
him, and for his miraculous escapes from danger he won
the title of the Man with Nine Lives.
His was a striking face. Swarthy, black-haired, black-
bearded, tall, with burning dark eyes, he was handsome,
sinister and menacing. He was fearless to a point of
foolhardiness, and had not been long in England before
he was arrested on a charge of libel. He pleaded boldly
that the words he had spoken had been true in substance,
but the case went against him, and in the end he left the
country.
Where he went, I do not know. Several countries had
already closed their ports to him because of his inflammatory
speeches and activities, and he made it a point of honour
not to claim any help from his Sicilian estates. Nor was
he a popular figure among anarchist leaders, because his
bitter tongue was always ready to flay them for unscrupulous
means which they employed, considering them justified by
the ends they had in view, but which Malatesta said were
dishonouring to the cause of communism.
During his career, this strange man had spent several
years in foreign prisons, and had thrice been sentenced to
death, each time escaping by breaking prison and safely
eluding the authorities who pursued him. Just before
coming to England, he had been imprisoned on the island
of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean, to serve a life sentence.
He had managed to smuggle into his cell a small stone-
ANARCHISM
47
breaking tool, with which he picked and wrenched a hole
large enough to admit his body. One stormy night he
clambered through it, made his way to the harbour, swam
out to a tiny fishing smack which was riding at anchor,
and succeeded in navigating it himself as far as Malta in
a sea in which practised seamen refused to put out in
pursuit because of its danger.
It will, perhaps, never be known how near this country
has at various times been to revolutionary outbreaks.
The sound sense of the British working man was then, as
it is now, an absolute preventive of any revolution; such a
thing would outrage all our national feelings and senti¬
ments. But let it be remembered that, in such places as
Russia and Austria, the desires of the multitude were not
taken into consideration when the standard of revolt was
raised by self-seeking agitators. So, in pre-War England,
it might have been that solitary outbreaks might have
occurred time after time, sponsored but not attended by
cowardly anarchists from other lands, and the lives wasted
in them would have been those of British workmen, misled
by communist tommy-rot, and British policemen trying to
save the public from looting, outrage and murder.
I am not able, because of the Official Secrets Acts, to
mention all the dramatic coups which took place between
1910 and 1914, the sudden arrests of “ undesirable aliens ”
who were subsequently imprisoned or deported, the con¬
stant connection between brutal murders and big robberies;
or to tell more about the anarchist spiders who moved to
and fro spinning their webs from various of our big towns,
only to find the flimsy fabrics broken by the police, and,
when possible, the silly dupes who were caught in them
released before they had paid some dire penalty for their
credulity.
But this at least I may say, that when the nation-wide
TRAITORS WITHIN
48
call rang out after the Serajevo murders, also planned and
executed by anarchists, and the agitators in Great Britain
settled down, as they thought, to work woe to our country
when she could least protect herself, when Scotland Yard
was busy with spy detection and capture and when the
volcanic fires of conflict would spew up all sorts of nervous
wrecks and bad characters, those agitators got a grievous
shock. Scotland Yard was, indeed, busy elsewhere; but
the restless and the discontented and the underdogs who
had until then been ready to listen to any traitor’s talk about
revolution dropped, from midnight on August 4th, every
private grudge and complaint. The anarchists who went
rejoicing among them, calling them “ Comrades ” and
inviting them to strike at their country in her hour of need,
were received with abuse, threats and finally with violence.
As I shall show in my chapters on anarchism during the
War, the agitators did not by any means stop their activities;
but the sort of reception they got may be judged by the
following little incident, told me by a fellow detective at
Christmas, 1914.
He was going home one evening along a crowded
Cricklewood street when he saw a man running for his life
before a shouting, boo-ing mob, mostly composed of
women. My friend raced along in their wake, in order
to try to prevent what he thought to be some sort of outrage.
He did not overtake them, however, till they were well along
Edgware Road, beside the Welsh Harp, and then only
because they caught their man. Pushing his way through
the crowd, now some hundreds strong, he breathlessly
asked what was the matter.
“ Matter ? ” panted a big, bony woman with a shopping
basket on one arm; “ he’s been addressin’ a meetin’ to say
that now’s the time ter down the King because the boys is
all away at the Front! We’re goin’ to duck him, that’s
ANARCHISM
49
what’s the matter; an’ if you try to stop us, you’ll go in too.
See ? And he’s lucky to get off so light; there’s some of
us ’ud wring his neck if we had our way.”
That was the spirit that the communists met when they
tried to kick a country that was almost down.
CHAPTER VI
The man I fought outside Buckingham Palace—The Royal Box at
Covent Garden invaded—The man with the skull and crossbones,
and what I did with him.
T HIS chapter, for a change, does not actually deal
with anarchists. I have inserted it here because,
in a chronological record of my career, it takes this
place, the events told in it occurring in those gay years just
before the War when all England seemed to be dancing
to the lazy tunes of Strauss waltzes, in a dream of content
and peace. But even then everything was not perfectly
peaceful, for at least two events in which I was implicated
took place which would have caused a very considerable
stir had they ever got into the newspapers.
The first began when one of the gardeners at Buckingham
Palace picked up, just inside the high wall which bounds
the Palace gardens from Grosvenor Place, a tiny note
addressed in a tall, spiky hand to one of our Royal Princesses.
The note, which was promptly handed to me since it had
obviously not arrived from a legitimate source, was a pas¬
sionate one, declaring the writer’s deathless love for the
lady to whom it was addressed, and begging her graciously
to receive the tokens of the writer’s affection which he
would shortly contrive to send to her.
That put me on my mettle. The unknown might have
penetrated our guard once, but he should not do so again.
I examined the paper under a microscope, but merely found
that it was of fine texture, foreign—probably Italian—
manufacture, unwatermarked, and that the writing, which
5 °
ANARCHISM
5*
was unsigned, was probably the work of a cultured man of
middle age and foreign nationality, the latter point of
course being deduced from the Continental formation of
the letters. I watched the Palace myself, instructed the
servants what to do if anything further was found, and
gave certain warnings to various police officers. And then
the next thing that happened was that a short and beautiful
love-poem was found in another part of the grounds,
obviously having been thrown over the wall as before, and
addressed to the same lady.
I began to realize my difficulties. The notes might
have been thrown from a passing omnibus, or tossed over
at night by a passer-by, or have come from any member
of the crowd that passed the walls every hour of the day.
I tightened up the watch, but two more messages and
another poem were handed to me during the next three
weeks, and I began to lose sleep over the matter. I skulked
around the walls eighteen hours out of the twenty-four,
I had every yard patrolled, I passed and repassed in dis¬
guise, but all to no avail. What was worse, the messages
were now followed by a magnificent diamond ring, and
then, two days after, by an exquisite and valuable pearl and
ruby brooch, each accompanied by a note which told of
sincerity and worship in every line. I must have been a
rather short-tempered man in those days!
Each missive arrived in a different place, and it seemed
that, unless our quarry had a cloak of invisibility or dropped
his messages from a balloon, he could not escape us much
longer. Nor did he. I was lurking in the stable yard of
the Palace one afternoon when I heard footsteps approach¬
ing. Looking out of my hiding-place, I saw a tall, distin¬
guished-looking man coming rapidly towards me. He
passed me, took something from his pocket, and, without
any hesitation, flung it over the wall into the gardens inside.
s2 TRAITORS WITHIN
I could not resist a triumphant smile as I stepped out and
faced him, but my smile soon faded. For the man must
have known something about boxing—he let out at me
the finest straight left I have ever seen outside the Albert
Hall.
I managed to dodge, and as his fist sped past my ear,
I closed with him. He was extraordinarily powerful, but
I had had the regulation police training in ju-jitsu, and
after a short, fierce struggle, he realized that resistance
was useless. I took my captive to the nearest police station,
only glad that the average criminal did not possess his
remarkable abilities.
He proved to be a foreigner of rank and breeding, and
he bore me no malice for having done my duty. But it
was duly pointed out to him that, although this country
had no ill-feeling against him, he could not be permitted
to offer unsought attentions to any British lady, much less
a Royal one; and in the end he was given into the charge
of his friends and left England, giving his word of honour
never to return.
My last interesting pre-war memory is of the man who
tried to invade the Royal Box at the Covent Garden Opera
House. That was in 1913, I remember; I had spent the
morning at a garden party which the Premier was giving,
for, as His Majesty was present, I had to attend also as a
precaution against any ill-judged anarchist activities. I was
in morning dress, and after the King had left, I made my
way home to change. As I entered, my telephone bell
rang imperatively.
“ Is that Mr. Fitch ? ” asked an excited voice. “ You
must come immediately to the Opera House.”
The voice was scared as well as excited, and I stayed to
ask no questions. In morning dress, just as I was, I raced
downstairs and jumped into the first taxi I could see, and
ANARCHISM
53
the driver made for Covent Garden at a pace I have never
since equalled, at any rate in a taxi. When I got there,
I found the management in a state approaching nervous
collapse!
“ Some madman’s got in here, Mr. Fitch! ” babbled
the manager, almost dragging me up the stairs. “ He’s got
a black skull and crossbones worked on his shirt, and he’s
stalking up and down by the Royal Box. I’m horribly
afraid. Look! there he is! ”
“ His Majesty doesn’t know he’s there,” he whispered.
" Don’t make a disturbance in here if you can help it.
Try to get him outside somehow. We don’t want a fight
outside the Royal Box—the Queen and some of the Royal
Family are in there, and they’d be alarmed. Besides, you
know what the people would do if they thought there was
anything threatening the King.”
So, while the fiddles scraped and the choruses echoed,
and the performers worked their hardest to earn the Royal
applause, I stood in the corridor, within easy distance,
trying to humour my madman to come outside with me.
He was a tall, bony-looking fellow with light, wild eyes,
and his dress coat was open to show a big skull and cross-
bones design realistically worked on his dress shirt. I
argued and wheedled, and humoured him as much as I
could; he was intent on entering the Royal Box, and two
or three times started towards it, but drew back when
I told him that there were attendants inside, and that they
would inevitably stop him before he could speak with
His Majesty.
After some minutes of talking, during which I kept
every muscle tense for a spring in case my man went too
near the door behind which the Royal Family sat uncon¬
scious of his presence, I hit on a brilliant argument.
I told the madman that his only chance of seeing the King
TRAITORS WITHIN
54
face to face was to come out into the street and wait till
His Majesty crossed to his car, when his attendants would
be behind him. Of course, the story of the attendants in
the box was a mere myth; but my ruse served. The man
with the skull and crossbones turned it over in his mind,
looked searchingly at me, and then came with me down
the stairs.
Attendants dropped back before us at a sign from me,
though their hands were itching to get to grips with the
tall fellow who accompanied me. I got him quite quietly
out into the street, and then I put my hand on his shoulder
and told him to consider himself under arrest. I began an
explanation, but my quarry spun suddenly round, got me
by the arm, and nearly broke it at his first wrench. I let
him have a straight left and managed to free myself, and
then flung my arms round him. I have never tackled so
strong a man. We swayed to and fro, the theatre attendants
dodging round us, unable to help because we writhed and
struggled so violently. The issue was in doubt for a
second when he caught my twisted arm again, but then I
managed to put him down with a Japanese trick, and a
policeman who had been trying to help got him by one
arm while I took the other.
As I had suspected when I got my first glimpse of him,
the man was mad. Whether there was any truth in his
wild tales about his anarchist instigators, I cannot say;
I believe he was just crazed. Anyway, he was subsequently
certified to be insane, and placed in an asylum.
One other adventure I had when I was attending the
King in 1913, ended much more quietly. His Majesty
was returning from opening Parliament, when, just before
his coach reached Buckingham Palace, an old man ran
suddenly out of the crowd and drew back his hand as if
to throw something at the coach. I was beside him and
ANARCHISM
55
had gripped his arm before he could do so, however;
and I discovered that the thing he held in his hand was
merely some form of petition. I would have arrested the
man, an old respectable-looking Jew, but His Majesty
stopped his coach and asked what was the matter.
“ In most Continental countries,” he said to me after
the Royal coach had passed on, “ I should have been clubbed
nearly to death for that, and my petition torn to pieces.
I was wrong to stop the coach like that; but no wonder
you love your King! ”
From my own years of contact with His Majesty, I can
very fully endorse that opinion. I have met officially a
good many of the Royal visitors to this country, I have
shown them the sights of London, travelling by ’bus and
tube incognito and unrecognized, and I have met them
occasionally when I have been abroad guarding our own
Royalties in foreign visits. Nearly all of these personages
were exceedingly nice to me; some of them pressed rewards
and decorations on me, as when the Kaiser presented me
with the Order of the Red Eagle for attending him when
he was over here before the War. But not one of them
has that curious, attractive charm which His Majesty
can so wonderfully exercise, which makes any man who
comes into contact with him loyally devoted to him for
life, and which is his own surest safeguard in the hearts
of his people against all those who wish him ill. Scotland
Yard can do much to keep actual foreign agitators and
murderers from his person, but he himself has succeeded
in setting about the throne the impenetrable guard of the
united British people’s love, respect and loyalty.
CHAPTER VII
The outbreak of war—Communists shepherded into prison camps if
troublesome—The stormy-petrels fly north-east—How Russia was
destroyed—-The part strikes played at home—Germany follows
Russia.
T HE outbreak of war which broke like a thunderclap
after the sultry world-oppression of July 1914,
meant for me a very considerable change over in
duties. Elsewhere in this book I deal more fully with the
new tasks which I was given in 1914, and tell the story of
my anti-spy work during the war years. That work kept
me so busy that I should have had but little time to devote
to the repression of anarchist activities; but fortunately
a number of causes conspired together to lighten that side
of the task.
In the first place, immediately war was declared, the
police force was given a very free hand to rid the country
of troublesome guests. We cleared the decks for action
to some effect, for nearly a hundred agitators of various
grades and degrees of danger were swept into the net
within a week of the declaration of war; and they were then
confined in prison camps or exported as undesirables.
Since the Yard knew the whereabouts of practically every
dangerous anarchist in the country, and had only been
prevented from acting before by lack of actual violence,
that comprehensive round-up did a lot to relieve anxiety
in high places. Many a harassed police official now wishes
from the bottom of his heart that a similar coup might be
worked to-morrow!
5 6
ANARCHISM
57
Another big factor which relieved England of strain
during the war years from the communist agitator source
was that the British people, for the first time in their history,
went solidly against any outside interference. I have
already told one story of the treatment of an anarchist by
a North London crowd; here is an incident I myself wit¬
nessed near Victoria, in September 1914. In a busy back-
street, a man had mounted himself on a soap-box and
begun talking about the War, and the way that lives were
being wasted in France. The gathering crowd listened for
some time in silence. Then a khaki-clad figure pushed his
way near to the orator.
I have heard quite a few men let off steam, but I take
off my hat to that sergeant. He must have spent five
minutes describing the agitator and those who sent him.
The crowd tittered at first, then it laughed, and finally it
roared. After the first minute, during which the soap-box
gentleman tried to shout the sergeant down (with notable
lack of success), he thought it time to pack up, and tried
to get off his box. But the sergeant, a big, powerful fellow,
got hold of him by the arm and held him still until his
vocabulary was exhausted. Then he called to the crowd to
open a passage and sped his man down it with a magnificent
kick. That kick typified the spirit of all England in those
days towards revolutionary agents.
During the first two years of the War, a significant
movement was noticeable among the few anarchists left
free in England. They urgently wanted to return to
Russia. Since Russia was an allied country, and since
most of the foreigners wanting to go there had come from
there originally, we had no choice but to let them go. But
the exodus looked menacing; the crows were gathering
above the dying bear, and had we had any shadow of
authority, we should have kept them here.
TRAITORS WITHIN
58
One of the first to go was Lev Trotsky, usually incorrectly
known nowadays as Leon Trotsky. We had him under
observation, of course, knowing that his return to Russia
would do that agonized country no good, and in 1917 he
was arrested by the Special Department while trying to
leave Halifax for Petrograd. Unfortunately there was no
legitimate excuse to detain him long, and so one of the
master minds of anarchism hurried north-eastwards to help
shape the world’s history.
Lenin, at that time, was in Switzerland, exiled by the
Tsarist authorities but still in constant communication
with the bolshevist agents in Russia. He applied to us for
leave to come here and return to Russia from one of our
ports. We refused him, knowing that his return would
mark the beginning of the end of our ally. It says much
for the reputation this remarkable man had gained that
when he sent the same request to Germany, it was received
there with the strongest official approval, although he had
previously been forbidden to enter the country. Now,
however, at the Kaiser’s personal order, a special sealed car
was placed at his disposal bearing the German Headquarters
Staff identification mark, which absolutely precluded any
examination or delay by German police officials. Lenin
and his anarchist staff sped through Germany and Russia
to Petrograd, and there he became the mainspring of what
he had always sworn should be the beginning of the end of
modern civilization as we know it.
There were, particularly towards the end of the War,
a number of abortive efforts to stir up strikes and disloyalty
among British workmen at home. Lenin, now directing
revolutionary operations all over the world from a powerful
position in Russia, struck as quickly and as hard as he
could at the factories which turned out the munitions
which were our very sinews of war. He was ready to use
ANARCHISM
59
any deluded pacifists in this country, and did so to some
effect. By circulating through his agents here seductively-
worded pamphlets saying that the War was being waged
for capitalist profit, he urged a stoppage of vital services
of all sorts.
At the Socialist Hall, Wandsworth, in August 1917, a
meeting of the Shop Stewards’ Committee took place to
consider a great engineers’ strike which had then been in
operation for a fortnight. This strike was holding up
munitions to a serious extent, and in consequences of it
there were whispers of resignations in quarters where the
country could not then afford to accept them.
With twenty constables I raided the meeting, and the
job was done so quietly that no one in the street outside
knew that we had entered the building. That was necessary,
for there were a few discontented men by the doors who
might have started a fight; and the authorities particularly
did not want street squabbles just then. I remember the
chairman’s astonished face and open mouth as I stepped
up to him and asked him for the addresses of certain
representatives who were not present.
In the end, seven men were arrested, and they duly
appeared at Bow Street. It was a striking comment on
these men that all but one of them were of military age,
though in that hour of national need they were still to be
found at home. Finally, they were released, after having
signed an agreement never again to make strikes or impede
munition work, and to call back the engineers to their
labours again on condition that terms should be fixed for
them by an Executive Committee of the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers and the Minister of Munitions. That
strike consequently was soon forgotten; had certain agi¬
tators had their way, it might have caused the gravest
consequences in France, where, by the end of the
6o TRAITORS WITHIN
fortnight, artillery supplies were already dangerously
shortened.
When the problem of conscription came seriously under
consideration, that also was used by anarchist agents in the
hope that it might prove a lever with which Britain could
be revolutionized. Numbers of societies were founded
with the avowed object of resisting conscription; some few
of them were honest, but the majority were in receipt of
anarchist gold and were working for anarchist ends. Unfor¬
tunately enough, we had to raid the innocent with the
guilty, as in those days risks could not be afforded, and it
was impossible to tell without actual search what character
these societies bore.
In the last months of 1917 I raided five such offices,
and in two cases continued my examinations at the homes
of officials connected with the organizations. I found a
great many leaflets of more or less seditious types, and of
course confiscated them, and I talked with all sorts of men
and women, some of them merely fanatical, and others
definitely untrustworthy. My instructions in those days
were to avoid trouble as much as possible, and to try by
giving serious verbal warnings to head off weak and obstin¬
ate persons from those who would have deluded them.
And in most cases I was able, by telling them in confidence
something of what I knew of the horrible, self-seeking
machine at whose instigation they were working, and giving
them a little inside information about the anarchist mur¬
derers I had met, to send them away disgustedly certain
that they had been duped, and anxious to avoid anything
similar in future.
An interesting example of the sort of man who did not
aid his country in the War was a delegate of a Seamen’s
Union whom I arrested in 1917 on the ground of illegally
passing men of military age out of the country. He was
ANARCHISM
61
accused of taking considerable sums of money from young
men who wished to avoid military service, and of giving
them in exchange seamen’s certificates enabling them to
serve on merchant steamers, and thus escape actual fighting.
That spirit, my experience goes to show, pervades all
anarchist, bolshevist and most socialist bodies—they are
very ready indeed to help the under-dog, but the unfortunate
under-dog has got to pay a price, in money, service or blind
promises, which all the assistance in the world would not
be worth. I am no politician, but personally, after what
I have seen, I would be sorry indeed to see any young man
of my acquaintance connecting himself with even the
mildest form of anarchism. It usually leads to trouble,
and I have too often known it lead to murder or suicide.
CHAPTER VIII
I arrest Morel—An ex-M.P. arrested for distributing harmful pamphlets
—Communist attempts to sow sedition at the Front, and what the
soldiers did!—Mr. Ramsay MacDonald at the Front.
O NE of the most interesting men I had to arrest
Iduring the War was Mr. E. D. Morel, the famous
journalist. His name is apt to be forgotten now,
but in pre-war days he ranked with Mrs. Harriet Beecher
Stowe as one of the most notable opponents of enslaved
native labour. His books, “ King Leopold’s Rule in
Africa,” and “ Red Rubber,” were burning subjects of
controversy in those days, and curiously enough he had
first come into prominence in connection with a statement
on Congo atrocities from Sir Roger Casement. It will be
remembered that the latter was hanged during the War
for his attempt to give the Germans a foothold in Ireland;
Morel, though not actually a pro-German, was a pacifist,
and began getting into trouble very soon after the outbreak
of war.
At first he was too cautious to embroil himself, though
he used his enormous reputation to deplore our entry into
the struggle and to plead the gospel of peace at any price.
He appeared on the committees of various pacifist organ¬
izations, but always kept just within the letter of the law,
though his propaganda was a continual nuisance to those
who carried on the onerous task of working for British
victory. In course of time, he became leader of the Union
of Democratic Control, a pacifist society allied to the
No-Conscription League. It will be remembered that, at
62
ANARCHISM
63
the time conscription was enforced, losses of merchantmen
at sea and heavy reverses on almost all fronts had reduced
our morale to a gravely despondent pitch, and Morel began
at this time to step over the borderline of legal practices.
One afternoon, I received a telephone call instructing me
to go at once to see the late Sir Francis Lloyd, then Com¬
petent Military Authority of London, and when I arrived
he showed me a leaflet supposed to have originated from
Morel’s office, and told me to raid the place. The leaflet
was so definitely pacifist as to be almost anti-British in tone,
and would certainly have done us serious harm abroad.
A number of similar leaflets were found at Morel’s
offices, and others in proof and actually printed at his house
at King’s Langley, which I raided too. At the trial, Morel,
whose real name was E. Morel de Ville, was charged under
the Defence of the Realm Acts with having incited a
Miss Ethel Sidgwick to smuggle a quantity of the pam¬
phlets over to Switzerland, whence they would have been
conveyed to Germany, with disastrous effect in the way of
heartening the enemy. Morel was lucky to get off lightly
with only six months in the second division; and he was
allowed to go to prison in a taxi because of his services to
humanity in connection with the Congo conditions.
During the four years of war, various attempts were
made to cause disaffection among troops at the Front. These
efforts mostly originated in communist groups in Switzer¬
land, which at that time harboured a number of anarchists
of the Lenin variety. Leaflets privately printed there were
smuggled in quantities into France, and offered to soldiers
passing to and fro on leave. The French police gave
short shrift to the agents they caught distributing such
matter, but it seems that the Tommies were even less
gentle.
It happened at the Base Camp at Le Havre that a certain
TRAITORS WITHIN
6 4
officer, beloved but dreaded by his men for his peppery
temper, came across a leaflet inciting “ all British soldiers
who respect their fellow-workers at home and abroad and
are ready to strike a blow against tyranny ” to turn their
rifles on their officers. The leaflet went on to suggest that
this might be safely done during attacks, in the confusion
of wire-cutting. The officer who found it said nothing,
but pinned it up among the regimental notices.
Two mornings later, he went to add something to the
board and found, lashed to the pole that supported it, the
drooping figure of a man. Cord passed round his legs
and shoulders in such a way that he could not move, and
he was gagged with a dirty roll of cloth. The sentries
denied all knowledge of how he had come there; but when
he was cut down, a number of the offensive leaflets were
still in one of his inner pockets. The honour of the regi¬
ment was salved. The leaflet was almost identical in word¬
ing to one which, in 1910, I had myself seen in an anarchist
den I raided near Hornsey.
A somewhat similar pamphlet, though not so openly
seditious, brought an ex-M.P. within the reach of the long
arm of the law. There was in March 1918a huge Labour
conference at Westminster Hall, attended by a number of
Labour leaders who have since become world-famous. In
the course of my duties, I went along to this meeting and
had a look round to see that all was as it should be. And
the first thing I saw was a man, standing by the entrance
to the building, furtively handing out papers to people who
passed in and out. I watched him for a minute or two in
the rain to make sure that I was right, and then, passing
near and giving him a meaning look, quietly held out my
hand. The man looked rapidly round to make sure that
no police official could see him and then pressed something
into my palm. I went round the corner of the building and
ANARCHISM 65
had a look at it. It was full to the brim with the most
disloyal statements, suggestions and advice, and I promptly
went back and put my hand on the distributor’s shoulder.
He was surprised!
The pamphlet I had received had no printer’s name or
address, which in itself was a breach of the law. But it did
not take me long to find out from my prisoner the source
from which he obtained his stock-in-trade (he himself,
poor old fellow, was a vagrant who would have distributed
anything for a few shillings), and after further enquiries
I traced their origin back to the last man in the world I
would have suspected, the late Mr. Arnold Lupton,
formerly M.P. for Sleaford.
When the case came up for trial, Sir Archibald Bodkin,
for the Crown, referred to “ the wicked and mischievous
matters this leaflet contains,” and he did not overstate his
case. Raiding the prisoner’s offices, I discovered proof
that he had been sending the leaflets to notable Conscientious
Objectors, German prisoners and soldiers home on leave.
Here again the man could do but little harm at home
because of the loyalty of the people, but such matter,
coming from an ex-Member of the British Parliament,
being published in Germany or in any neutral country, as
it might well have been had we not stopped it in time,
would then have done this country incalculable harm.
Once again the author was awarded only six months’
imprisonment.
A good deal has been written since the War of the
activities of those famous members of the Labour Party in
Great Britain who organized pacifist demonstrations during
the War. Certain politicians since famous as representatives
of our Government chose the war years as a time suitable
for all sorts of speeches and actions in which they expressed
their opinions that war should always be avoided at any
66 TRAITORS WITHIN
price, and that Britain was morally in the wrong in wasting
the lives of her soldiers over a mere “ scrap of paper ”
which pledged our country’s honour in the eyes of the
world. Of course, I personally consider those politicians
to have been following quite mistaken ideals; I myself hold
views contrary to theirs in that and many other particulars.
But let me say now that the official Labour Party and the
real politicians of the pre-War Labour Movementhad nothing
whatever to do at any time with anarchist or disloyal efforts
such as I have described. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and
his followers may have been an embarrassment to us
during the war years, but they were always scrupulously
honest in wishing Britain’s welfare, and never for a moment
did they tamper with bolshevism or anarchism. They
would have been as indignant as the Chief of Police himself
at any effort to cause national revolution or military mutiny.
One famous Labour leader, indeed, served for a short
time as a stretcher-bearer at the Front, and risked his life
in heavily shelled areas time and again bringing in wounded
men. It was always his argument that, though he was a
pacifist, yet he would do anything common humanity per¬
mitted to ease the sufferings of our casualties; and from
my own experiences of the Lenin type of agitator, I do
not believe that one in a thousand of them would risk his
own skin for his principles in that way. On one occasion,
towards the end of the War, Mr. MacDonald was making
a political visit to France, and was moving along a com¬
munication trench behind the lines when a shrapnel shell
exploded a little ahead of his party. The General who was
escorting him has often since told the story of that moment.
“ I looked round,” says the General, “ to see whether
Mr. MacDonald, as a confirmed peacemaker, would blink
at the explosion, which was pretty near us. But, bless you,
I believe he was cooler than I was myself; and then I
ANARCHISM 67
learned that it was not the first time he had been under
fire.”
To return to the anarchists. It was a little surprising
for me, during the last year of the War, to find the differ¬
ences that the Russian Revolution had made in my work.
Lenin, once a fleeing exile seeking sanctuary in England
and attending, as I have told, secret anarchist conferences
here, had become a ruler more absolute than the Tsar he
superseded; Trotsky was now a general; and over here men
who had formerly been furtive anarchists living in slum
streets with the official eye never very far removed from
their neighbourhood had suddenly been appointed ambas¬
sadors, consuls, plenipotentiaries, and welcomed as official
and respected visitors.
I cannot, unfortunately, give names, for these people
have in many cases become famous since as representatives
of the new Russia of the hammer and sickle. But one man,
now known by name even to the quietest of Britain’s
inhabitants, featured in 1918 in a rather amusing incident
which illustrates the vagaries of fortune. I had been
active for some days on a search for a spy whose letters,
stopped by our censor and passed to me for examination,
bore no name or address, and on the day in question I had
decided to comb certain waterside haunts in London where
the man had evidently been a few days earlier.
Passing a block of shipping offices I was run into and
almost knocked down by a man who had come hurriedly
out of the door without looking where he was going. The
man, a tall figure in a fur-collared coat, gave one look at
me, muttered something and ran several steps away before
he could manage, with an absurd dignity, to pull himself
into a walk. It was his walk that betrayed him—otherwise
I should hardly have recognized the well-fed, well-dressed
figure. But that slightly-limping strut brought back
68 TRAITORS WITHIN
vividly to my mind a man I had once cross-questioned in
an East London room. At that time he was a prominent
member of the Lettish Club to which the Gardstein murder
gang belonged; and at the end of my questioning, he was
so uncomfortable (though actually he was innocent of all
connection with that crime) that the memory survived after
eight years, and my unexpected presence gave him such a
shock as sent him, officially licensed representative of his
country as he was, scampering away down Wapping
High Street!
CHAPTER IX
I arrest the Bolshevist Ambassador during the Second Russian
Revolution—Has the leopard really changed his spots ?—The
Police Strike in 1918, and its friendly settlement—General
Macready becomes Police Chief—Soldiers at the Yard; their
difficulties and successes.
O N September 6th, 1918, I received a dramatic
message from a high official at the Yard. The
effects of that message made history, since, for
the first time in the record of a civilized country, a foreign
ambassador within its capital was arrested. My orders
were to arrest M. Litvinoff and two of his assistants,
M. Herman Wintin and M. Vladimir Oshminski, because
they “ had, were about to, or were committing a suspicious
act.” My rush by taxi to Golders Green and the subsequent
warning which, as in duty bound, I offered, that anything
said might be used in evidence against my prisoners, seemed
to me quite like old times, when the prototypes of these
indignant Russians now before me had, in their former
anarchist state, been my natural enemies!
It was not actually made public at the time, but the real
reason for arresting these three officials was not solely
that their own acts were suspicious. It was also that we
hoped at that time that their detention would save the
lives of British citizens then in revolutionary Russia. Word
had just been received by radio from Moscow that the
British Consulate at Petrograd had been sacked, and that
all communication with it had ceased. Foul play was
feared even then; two days later it was discovered that
Captain Crombie, D.S.O., a British Naval Officer at the
69
TRAITORS WITHIN
70
Consulate, had been shot in half a dozen places and mur¬
dered when trying to guard official papers belonging to the
British Government, and that several other British people
in Petrograd had been seized, brutally ill-treated, beaten
with sticks and fists, and finally flung into a filthy gaol
whose internal conditions were absolutely indescribable.
Immediately this news was confirmed, our Government
sent a strong telegram to the Bolshevist authorities, reporting
that arrests of their officials had been made in London,
requiring full reparation for the harm to British life and
property already done in Russia, and insisting on the
immediate release of all British prisoners wrongfully
confined and their safe conduct over the Finnish border.
There followed days of suspense, but our official telegram
remained unanswered, and its conditions were sneeringly
ignored. Then came an urgent message from our Embassy
at Moscow, saying that reliable information had been
received there that the Embassy was to be attacked, and
that the Russian authorities would wink at such an outrage.
The Embassy was sacked, valuable papers destroyed and our
official representatives in Moscow made to flee for their
very lives. The true story of that attack has never yet
been given in detail; it is one to make all true Englishmen
blush with shame! And its only sequel was that, six days
after his dramatic arrest M. Litvinoff was released, though
we were told to keep him “ under police supervision.”
Government bluff had been treated with contempt by
Bolshevist authorities, and its weakness was publicly
acknowledged by that release while our Moscow Embassy
rooms were still a mass of smashed furniture and burnt
official papers.
I have no wish to enter into a political discussion on the
merits or demerits of British Governmental intercourse
with Soviet Russia, for in any case one must realize that
ANARCHISM
7i
international trading is a necessity, and this cannot ade¬
quately be dealt with if official diplomatic recognition is
forbidden. But solely as regards police work, the ascent
to high places of those who were for so many years the
hunted quarry of most of the police authorities of Europe
has produced a big crop of difficulties for the unfortunate
detective of to-day. With my own ears, I have heard
Lenin declaim against Great Britain and threaten her
downfall by revolution, and urge the advent of that revolu¬
tion (in which King and Government were to be swept
away, as in Russia) as Britain’s only salvation. Lenin’s
creed vitalized most of the rulers of Russia to-day. Mean¬
while, we give diplomatic immunity to Soviet officials
in this country, making it possible for them if they so choose
to forward Lenin’s doctrines and hatch Lenin’s plots in
our very midst.
Understand, I do not make any suggestion that this is
done. Doubtless, as they come to realize that worlds are
not successfully and happily ruled by the voice of destructive
anarchism, the old fire-eaters and bomb-throwers will
modify their views. The irresistible pressure of the machine
of world politics will, in time, shape them, if not into
idealists, at least to something which understands the
limits of armed revolt and secret murder as means to a
political end. But I have had so much to do with the
anarchists who have since shaped the new Russia that I
find it very hard to believe that such desperate extremists
could ever be very ready to welcome a change of heart;
can the leopard really change his spots, or the lion lie
down in mutual comfort with the lamb ? The Arcos Raid,
of which I shall have more to say in a later chapter, gave
many people serious doubts of it.
I have now to tell of a great strike of 1918 which was,
for once, not caused by anarchist agitators, but which gave
72 TRAITORS WITHIN
rise to a good many false hopes in the minds of some of
them. At the beginning of September, there wa 9 a police
strike dramatic in its sudden completeness, for a very large
number of policemen of all grades “ stopped work.”
Thousands of Special Constables were immediately called
out to carry on the vital duties of traffic regulation, night
patrolling and the everyday tasks for the preservation of
law and order. The “ Specials ” (all of them, of course,
old or disabled men) responded gallantly to the call; but
I trust they will forgive an “ old soldier” for saying that
they were not always very sure with their traffic, as I happen
to remember. In my own work, for the three days the
strike lasted, I found it quicker to travel on foot, generally
speaking, than by taxi.
The cause of the strike was a question of police pay, which
was admittedly not very high at that time, for due allowances
had never been made for the tremendous rise in prices
which, by the autumn of 1918, was causing even good
pre-war incomes to seem seriously shrunken. Police
Constable Theil had been dismissed for raising a question
about wage increases, and one of the demands of the
strikers was that he should be reinstated.
On the third morning after the outbreak, the Prime
Minister offered to deal with the problem in person. Mean¬
while, London and other big towns were witnessing extra¬
ordinary scenes. Several thousand ex-policemen, having
nothing else to do, had been spending the previous days
talking more or less friendlily to the “ Specials ” who had
superseded them. In one or two places there was a certain
amount of good-natured booing when the newcomers
found the traffic a bit too much for them. Also, as was
natural enough, there was a good deal of persuasion offered
to them to join the strike, but the amateurs stuck manfully
to their job.
ANARCHISM
73
On the corner of Westminster Bridge and Whitehall,
where traffic is thick at the best of times, a small and
elderly “ Special ” got into difficulties, on the last morning
of the strike, and a traffic block of really magnificent
proportions ensued. Coming out of the House of Commons
I found vehicles of all sorts forming quivering black
tentacles in all directions from the stricken “ point,” much
like the tentacles of an octopus. But the things one or two
of the girl drivers were saying would have made most
octopi blush!
I went along to see if I could be of assistance. At the
cross-roads I found the “ Special ” in the middle of a knot
of burly men in mufti. “ It’s no good you tryin’ it no
more,” said one of the latter as I came up. “ You ain’t
half made a pretty little job of this 1 Shows what comes o’
usin’ you blinkin’ amachoors! You leave it to us, mate;
we’ll put it right for yer. Now you stand on the pavement
there and think about Kayser Bill, an’ leave it to us.” Ten
minutes later, the strikers, for that is what they were, had
cleared the congestion perfectly and handed over official
control again to “ the blinkin’ amachoor.”
As a direct result of the Prime Minister’s intervention,
reasonable terms were offered to the strikers that afternoon.
Thirteen shillings a w r eek increase was allowed on pensions,
various increases were made on wages and on allowances
for children, a war bonus of thirteen shillings a week was
offered, and Police Constable Thiel was reinstated with no
official record of his dismissal. Passing through Charing
Cross that evening, I heard tremendous mass cheering
from a number of stikers gathered there, and realized that
next morning would see the familiar blue uniforms again
about the streets.
That night the Commissioner of Police sent in his
resignation, which was accepted with the sweetening
TRAITORS WITHIN
74
addition of an offer of a baronetcy. The new Commissioner,
Lieutenant-General Sir C. F. Neville Macready, was the first
of a line of distinguished military men who have since been in
control at the Yard, and his appointment was received in the
Force with widespread approval.
Since then a lot of criticism has been levelled at the
system which rules that soldiers shall control our police
forces. It has been argued that a man whose life has been
spent studying military tactics, the respective merits of
trench or cavalry warfare, the problems of using modern
artillery and transporting bodies of attacking and defending
troops, cannot be the best choice for a position whose
holder must control crime prevention, arrange and operate
detective organizations and co-ordinate the thousand
activities of modern police work. It has even been openly
hinted in the Press and elsewhere that certain recent
resignations at the Yard have been caused by the resent¬
ment of old detective officers in being taught their job by
soldiers.
I am in touch pretty nearly as much nowadays with
my old team-mates in the Criminal Investigation Depart¬
ment as I was when I was still on the active list, and I can
definitely say that such rumours are absolutely without
foundation. No detective would allow personal feelings
to come before public duty; and in point of fact the Com¬
missioner does not interfere with detective work, which is
controlled by its own official heads at the Yard. The job
of a Commissioner is just to organize and co-ordinate the
police and detective machine as a whole; he does not
interfere with the duties of each or any part of it.
There is, however, a definite “ grouse ” among some of
the leading detectives of to-day, and the cause is that such
a number of new regulations have been issued in the last
four or five years, due to pressure from humanitarian
ANARCHISM
7 S
Members of Parliament (who have never seen a criminal
in their lives and believe the breed to be a species of harried
and bullied martyr), that it is really extremely difficult
nowadays to make a case even against the most brutal
murderer. An example of the regulations which cause
the trouble is one which says that if a police officer should
apprehend a suspected person near the scene of a murder
and within a few hours of the commission of the crime,
and if his quarry has marks of blood on his hands or clothing
the officer may on no account question him as to how they
came there until he has had opportunity to obtain legal
advice!
Think of it! Your nearest relative or friend may be
murdered to-morrow, and that rule would quite possibly
permit the murderer to get off scot free! For of course,
once legal advice is taken, no admissions are ever obtained!
There have been a number of murders in the last year for
which no one has been arrested merely because regulations
now make a police case against a suspected person absolutely
unsure of a successful termination, no matter how obvious
the guilt may be. To ask detectives to work under such
rules is like asking an athlete to run hobbled! But the
fault does not lie with the military Police Commissioners.
CHAPTER X
After the War—Anarchists agents among the “ demobbed ” meet
with little sympathy—We deport a few of them—Degradation of
Trebitsch Lincoln, Jew, Presbyterian Minister, Anglican Priest,
M.P. and double traitor.
W HEN the Armistice was signed at last, I made
another big change-over in the nature of my
work. After four strenuous years of spy-
catching, I turned again to the anti-anarchist activities of
my Department. Just before the War broke out, I had
been doing a good deal of work in personal contact with
various members of our Royal Family, and had there been
no hostilities I might perhaps have ended my active career
as personal police guard to one of its members. But in
1918, with only a few more years before my retirement
became due, it did not seem advisable to attempt to take
up that side of my duties in exclusion to other ones, particu¬
larly as I could not have served for many years before
another man would necessarily have superseded me. So I
turned back to my old friends, the bomb and knife bandl
Truth to tell, we expected a good deal of trouble with
them between 1918 and 1920. Thousands of men were
demobilizing from the Army, jobs were scarce, prices were
high, promises almost hysterically given in war years could
not always be made good in the cold light of reason. In
fact, conditions were then more favourable than for half a
century previously for agitators to find likely material to
work upon among the ranks of the shell-shocked, the dis¬
contented and the newly poor. And anarchist agents,
76
ANARCHISM
77
never long at rest, began to flock to England in all kinds
of disguises, to try to stir up that longed-for revolution in
which the working-man should suffer the losses and the
instigators get the pickings.
Once more it was proved that the War, ghastly calamity
to humanity as it was, had yet knitted together the loyal
fibre of our race and so stirred its former too-satisfied spirit,
that where aliens with specious plans for our national
downfall had formerly been listened to in apathy or sym¬
pathy, now they received the cold shoulder or the ex-Army
boot! In police court cases during those two years, it
happened time and again that an agitator sought redress
from the very law he himself flouted, because his efforts
to suborn the loyalty of out-of-works had ended in painful
assault and battery upon his person! And most of those
cases were dismissed with a grim warning from the bench
not to invite trouble in future.
On the whole, these anarchist agents had a thankless
task. Although, now, they could operate with considerably
more outside assistance (for, whatever the Soviet Govern¬
ment said or did officially, it certainly permitted anarchist
clubs and societies to use Russia as a jumping-off place
for attempts to revolutionize Britain), yet they found our
police watch as attentive as ever here, and received a much
less enthusiastic welcome from their intended dupes. Some
of them, however, went about their tasks with quite a
fanatical fervour, and consequently had to be deported as,
one after another, they broke our country’s laws.
In February 1919, a big, bearded, sallow-faced Russian
named Myer Hyman was recommended for deportation
and moved out of the country. His offence technically
was in failing to register himself as an alien. I wonder
how many times my readers have noticed that innocuous
phrase in their newspapers when the real reason behind
TRAITORS WITHIN
78
the arrest was not merely failure to register but also des¬
perate attempts to cause armed outbreaks in Britain. Mr.
Hyman’s real reason for leaving was that, in organizing
a London conference of ex-criminals, known anarchist
agents and socialist extremists in London, he made a silly
mistake. I went along to his lodgings one evening, sent
up a note indicating that I was a Swedish agitator of some
repute known to him by name but not by sight, and finally
went in and discussed with him his plans for sowing
disaffection among the lower ranks in the Army. Having
obtained enough information, I finally arrested him.
The same day, I arrested a compatriot of his, one Max
Segal, who was to have attended the conference, and also
Jules Edvard Soermus, a Finnish violinist. Segal had, it
transpired from Mr. Hyman’s candid remarks to me, come
over as official representative of a powerful revolutionary
society in Moscow, and he had brought with him the sum
of £4,000 in gold and bonds. This money was to be
used for necessary expenses in England, such as the setting
up of private printing presses for producing anarchist
literature, the purchase if possible of arms and ammunition,
and the payment of agents to spread mutinous and revolu¬
tionary arguments throughout Great Britain. A good
proportion of it subsequently found its way into the British
Treasury coffers. Soermus, outwardly a respectable member
of a cinema orchestra, carried in the case of his spare violin
papers which, as Hyman told me with a throaty chuckle,
the English bluebottles (police) would give their eyes to
see. I need hardly say that, when I raided Mr. Soermus,
it was unnecessary to give anything nearly as valuable,
though the papers were admittedly of enormous help to us,
not so much then as a month or two later, when certain
other deportations took place. The upshot of it all was
that Hyman, Segal and Soermus were tried together, and
ANARCHISM
79
finally deported together, Hyman apparently rather
depressed by his friends’ black looks in his direction.
In July the same year, Frances Ida Soermus (nee Hewitt),
born at Barnstaple on October 4th, 1896, and married to
Soermus when she was twenty-one years of age, left England
to join her husband abroad, because, he said, he had finally
decided that it was too dangerous to return. The young
woman stepping on board the steamer had not the slightest
suspicion that she was watched; but Scotland Yard never
gives much loose rein to those who trouble it, and we had
known from the beginning that she only stayed here in
order to help her husband back to Britain should occasion
arise.
It was round about this time that a small notice appeared
in the London Gazette which wrote finis to the activities
in this country of that amazing man, Ignatius Timothy
Trebitsch Lincoln. The notice itself merely announced
briefly that a Certificate of Naturalization, granted on
May 5th, 1909, was revoked for disloyalty to His Majesty.
To me, it was the end of a very long story, almost incredible
in its details; for I had professionally watched over Lincoln’s
dramatic career for eight years, and had always expected
some such end to it.
A Jew, born in Hungary, he featured very early in life
in anarchist troubles there. He was then believed to have
been influenced by older men while himself still impression¬
able and adolescent, but his after life showed that curious
natural ferocity against all authority and system which has
been the hall-mark of other notable Jews such as Lenin
and Trotsky. Like them he proved ready to sacrifice
anything, even his religion and pride of race, if only he
could harm England, which was then considered the chief
bulwark against all forms of anarchist activity.
After travelling for a year or two he came to England,
80 TRAITORS WITHIN
already with somewhat of a reputation for incendiary
activities, and here he became first a Presbyterian minister
and then a Church of England clergyman. But always,
at the back of his mind, he had the idea of harming England.
Soon afterwards, he was elected M.P. for Darlington,
coming in with a small majority over Mr. Pike Pease, and
so he found himself at Westminster with increased powers
to hurt the country that sheltered him. What he did not
know was that, all the time, he was being patiently watched,
and that his revolutionary efforts were known to the police
from the first moment he set foot in this country. There
are to-day other men like him who think themselves very
clever and unsuspected, and who in the fullness of time
will, like Lincoln, discover their mistake.
At the outbreak of war this man went to the Admiralty
with a wild-cat scheme for the destruction of the German
High Seas Fleet. At a little room at the Admiralty building
in Whitehall he brazenly confessed that he had formerly
been a spy of Germany, but that he had never sent them
any useful information and that he only wanted their
money. At the same time, he said, the German authorities
still trusted him, and he proposed that he should get in
touch with them, telling them that a weak portion of the
British Fleet would be at a certain station at a certain time,
and advise them to send a strong squadron to destroy it.
Mr. Lincoln coolly suggested that we should then send our
whole battle fleet to the spot and exterminate the enemy
squadron.
Imagine the scene. The astute, dark-faced Hungarian
Jew advancing point after point of his wily arguments in
the sunny, dusty room at the Admiralty, and watching the
blue-eyed rugged face of the one man in all England who
would have had the daring to execute such a scheme had
it been desirable or possible—fierce, heavy-browed old
ANARCHISM
81
John Fisher. There was a pause, during which Fisher left
the room. In that pause, he made certain enquiries about
the man who had come to him, and was told that he was
unreliable, disloyal and probably working a double game
in the enemy’s interests. Two minutes later, old John
had, in his own expressive phraseology, told Trebitsch
Lincoln to go to the Devil and take his scheme with him!
He went—no offence!—to America. There, furious
at the failure of whatever twisted scheme he really had in
his mind, he published in the New York World, a biting
attack on this country, in which he declared that he had
gone to England in the first place “ with an unflinching
determination to deceive the English in order to harm
them," and that only “ a mischance " had prevented him
from succeeding in “ luring part of the British Fleet into
the North Sea to be destroyed by the waiting German
Fleet! ” It was, on the whole, a pretty little story; perhaps
its chief fault was that the German Fleet was not able to
get out from its blockade to do the waiting referred to in
his article. The reason he was so raw just at that time was
that we had caused it to be known in certain quarters whose
information always went direct to Germany that Mr.
Lincoln had offered to betray to our authorities certain
secret German plans. Which was, taking the man on his
own authority, no more than the truth!
What he did in America during the next few months,
I cannot say, but he was soon in trouble again, and this
time for such an unromantic crime as forgery! It was
proved in an American court that he had forged on various
cheques the name of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, the
well-known philanthropic millionaire, and Lincoln was
promptly extradited and returned to England for trial,
much as a kicking, squealing child is carried back to school
for punishment after trying to run away. At the Old
82
TRAITORS WITHIN
Bailey, in July 1916, the full story of his numerous indis¬
cretions was recounted to his own astonished ears, and he
seemed both impressed and annoyed to find that we had
so complete and damning a record. He was sentenced to
three years’ penal servitude, and I do not think he was
punished unduly. Probably what hurt him even more
than his sentence was the knowledge that, during all the
years when he had been posing as the world’s master-spy
and deluding himself with the thought that he was deceiving
both Germany and England about his real aims (which
seem always to have been to gain money for Trebitsch!),
he was really adequately watched by Scotland Yard who
nevertheless had always considered him and his bungling
as rather small game.
CHAPTER XI
The man who brought over money from Russia—The Chief Soviet
Courier—a woman—comes over here as a newspaper corre¬
spondent—Anarchists who abuse the privileges of the Press—
The armoury at Acton, with rifles for the Revolution—An out-
of-work who was loyal—The English Colonel who was arrested
for sedition—Was it a case of high treason ?
O F all the anarchist agents who honoured us with
a visit in pre-war days, I think the most dangerous
was Axel Zachiarassen. A young man, dressed
when I arrested him in a shabby brown suit, his mild blue
eyes surely rather those of a dreamer than an incendiary,
he looked about as unlike the stage anarchist as any man
I have ever seen. In my experience, however, it is very
often the dreamer who proves to be the really troublesome
man, while the black-bearded, dark-eyed anarchist fre¬
quently proves to be nothing but a windbag after all.
He had come to England from Stockholm, where he had
been closely watched by the Swedish police, and settled
temporarily in London. He took his time on his travels,
paying calls on behalf of the Russian revolutionary society
he represented to various notable agitators abroad. After
reaching London he was exemplary in conduct for a couple
of weeks, and then, thinking that we had forgotten him,
he visited a London anarchist and paid over to him a
considerable sum of money. This sum we afterwards
checked up, and it proved to be a very large amount; and
the purpose for which the Russian contributors had
intended it, was to stir up and help finance in England a
General Strike to start on May Day, 1920. Unfortunately
83
TRAITORS WITHIN
84
for the extremists, and fortunately for us, the money was in
safe keeping long before that date, and even when the
General Strike did occur some years later, it failed to bring
with it the Russian Dictatorship for which this man and his
prototypes had so relentlessly and unscrupulously worked.
Zachiarassen’s official reason for being in England was
that he was a travelling correspondent of a Russian news¬
paper. I might mention that the disguise of a newspaper
correspondent is one of the commonest chosen by anarchists
and spies in this country; it gives them a cloak with which
to cover otherwise suspicious movements and enquiries,
and they usuially say, when arrested, that they were getting
information for a book on unrest in England! To anyone
who has met real newspaper men, as I have, these poseurs
are unmasked with a few simple questions, for usually they
do not know the first thing about newspaper work. But
the matter is one which I have no doubt the genuine
Pressmen resent, for it reflects unhappily on the integrity
of the Press as a whole, at least in the minds of the general
public.
I arrested Zachiarassen at a lodging-house in Camber¬
well, and he volubly protested his innocence. I noticed,
however, that a quick glance went towards a very heavy
pair of boots lying in the corner of the room. I had a look
at them, and, as I more or less expected, the uppers were
lined with waterproof pouches in which some of the money
and bonds had doubtless come over from Russia. The
man’s waistcoat was also false-lined, and from one of the
papers I found in it I obtained the principal facts that were
used against him in his trial.
One letter which he had hidden about his person was
addressed by name to Angelica Balabaroff, London, but
unhappily had no other address. For weeks, all London was
scoured in vain for this beautiful girl, who at that time
ANARCHISM 85
was the Chief Courier of the Soviet. Whether she had not
arrived or whether she lay low on hearing of her con¬
federate’s arrest, I cannot tell. I was very sorry to miss
the opportunity of a chat with her, for she was one of the
most romantic and sinister figures of the Russian Revolu¬
tion, and she should not have been in London at all.
Her name has attracted as much legend as fact, for she
is extraordinarily elusive. It is said that both her parents
were murdered by a Tsarist cavalry officer when she was a
small child eighteen years ago, and that since then she has
sworn to destroy all the leading countries of Europe by
revolution. Like a bird of evil omen, she appeared in
Italy just before Mussolini’s dramatic intervention dragged
that country back from the very brink of socialism. She
was also seen in Spain and arrested there just before King
Alfonso’s flight, but she escaped from prison on the day
the actual revolution occurred. England is her special
foe, but only on that one occasion have we captured any
proof that she has ever visited us personally. Scotland
Yard has her dossier and appearance by heart, however,
and, although she is unbelievably clever at disguises, I
fancy that she will be unwise to risk another visit.
Zachiarassen, despite the absolutely damning evidence
we produced at his trial, pleaded that he had not meant to
harm this country but merely to do social work among its
poorer classes! His ingenuous excuses did not save him,
however, and I personally had the pleasure of deporting
him from Newcastle on the 18th of July, 1919.
Early in the following month the Yard had another
brush with its anarchist enemies. A policeman on point
duty at Acton was approached by a middle-aged man in
rather shabby clothes, and the man held out to him a
folded paper. “ This seems like something for you,
mate,” he said shortly. “ A chap gave it to me round the
86 TRAITORS WITHIN
corner here. You might just say at the Station that an
out-of-work ex-soldier gave it to you; we’re not all such
b-y pigs as these dirty Russians seem to think! ”
The leaflet was addressed “To our Comrades, the
out-of-work ex-soldiery of England,” and was one of the
finest bits of sedition I have ever read. It began with a
lot of pretended sympathy for the men who “ had served
their country and been promised golden rewards by the
capitalists, and are now left to starve in the streets.” It
told them of the sympathy of their Russian Comrades,
and promised rich rewards. But the rewards, it explained,
could not be given until “ the shop-keeping and business
classes have been destroyed, down to the man who keeps
a stall in the street, and their women and children put to
the sword.” Finally, it invited those readers who wished
to know more to apply by letter to an Acton box address.
I thought it better to apply in person, and did so. The
little shop whose box address had been used was easily
found, and when I explained to its owner what sort of
activities were being conducted under cover of his business,
he wanted to shut up the shop and come along with me to
find the offender. I was sorry that regulations forbade
that kind of retribution; my friend did not say a great
deal, but the scowl on his face and the loving way he
rubbed his clenched fists together made me loath to dis¬
appoint him.
When I reached the address he gave me of the man
who had hired the use of the box address, I got rather a
surprise. We had stumbled on a perfect little incubator
of revolutions. The place contained seditious and revolu¬
tionary leaflets intended for the Army, Navy and civil popu¬
lation, suggesting all varieties of mutiny, murder and
outrage. There were instructions, given in great detail
and evidently drawn up by someone with military know-
ANARCHISM
87
ledge, on how supplies of rifles and explosives might be
seized in public buildings, barracks and so on “ when the
revolution began.” There were also rifles, revolvers and
ammunition.
More arrests and deportations followed the arrival of
our car-load of confiscated pamphlets and arms. Some
of the documents, when they came to be examined, bore
what appeared to be the signature of Lenin himself, but
my own opinion is that these signatures were forgeries.
Lenin was certainly a stick-at-nothing anarchist in the days
before he rose to power, but afterwards there seems reason
to believe that he learnt the uselessness of some of his
former bloodthirsty ideas. On this occasion, as usual, the
secret headquarters was run by foreigners, not by Britishers.
British communists, at least those whom I have met, look
askance at murder and bloodshed as political tools; they
want to bring about their ideals by more legitimate means.
It is a great pity that the foreign brand brings so much
opprobrium to the home product; it must be almost as
much of an embarrassment to the latter as it is to the Yard!
In the whole of my experience I only remember one
famous British-born anarchist—or perhaps I should call
him communist in this case. He was Colonel Malone,
an M.P. and once member of a famous British regiment,
and his arrest took place about at this time. I was called
urgently to the Yard one evening, and shown a report of
a speech made by Colonel Cecil Lestrange Malone, M.P.,
at the Albert Hall that afternoon. I must admit that it
surprised me that a man who had taken the Army oath of
loyalty to the King should afterwards have been willing
to speak in such a fashion.
“We shall have to use lamp-posts and walls! ” this man
had declaimed to a great gathering in Kensington.
“ What are a few Churchills or a few Curzons on lamp-posts
88 TRAITORS WITHIN
compared to the bombing of harmless Egyptians in Egypt ?
We have to listen to the foul slanderings of the capitalist
Press. Make up your minds whether you are for the
capitalist classes with their scurvy agents Churchill, Curzon,
George, Thomas, Henderson and Brace, or whether you
are of the communist party.” And a good deal more in
the same delightfully outspoken vein!
I went along immediately to Colonel Malone’s house
at Chalk Farm. My quarry wasn’t there, but I found a
few things that were interesting. Among other things,
I discovered an envelope containing two cloakroom tickets
issued by two different and distant stations. I had come
across that dodge for hiding dangerous material before, so
I took them along and collected the parcels. Those parcels
were, in each case, bundles of typed sheets, and they were
among the most interesting things I ever found in all my
career.
They were headed “ Red Officers’ Course,” and under
the title was a brief explanatory paragraph. This said that
the material in the booklet was never to be divulged to
police authorities no matter how great the necessity. The
Official Secrets Act unfortunately prevents my disclosing
details about this material, but I can definitely say that it
was the most damnable stuff I have ever seen during my
whole career.
Malone’s counsel made but little defence against the
accusation of seditious speaking, but said that his client
flatly denied all knowledge of the R.O.C. booklets. I gave
my evidence, and an official of the Underwood Typewriter
Company, having examined the typewriter I had found at
Malone’s flat, stated that the documents had been typed
on that identical machine as far as he could tell from minor
inequalities of type, etc. The counsel stated that the only
explanation that occurred to him was that the machine had
ANARCHISM
89
been used by some person other than Colonel Malone,
in the latter’s absence, and that the cloakroom tickets had
been “ planted ” in the flat by some evilly disposed person.
The counsel for the prosecution merely detailed all known
facts, produced the booklets for the court’s examination,
and pointed out the clause in the booklet saying that owner¬
ship must be denied at all costs. He also expressed his
surprise that a man who had taken the King’s commission
and accepted the King’s money for military service, and
who, in his character of an officer and a gentleman, had
represented a British constituency, East Leyton, in Parlia¬
ment, should have been involved in such matters.
Malone was told by the Bench that if the booklet pro¬
duction was brought home to him, he might be tried for
High Treason. For some reason, however, there seemed
to be an inclination not to stress too much this part of the
case. The Red Officers’ Course had received too much
publicity already ever to do England much harm in the
future, and the tendency was to leave it at that. Malone,
however, was given six months in the second division, and
I should think his counsel and he might well have exchanged
congratulations afterwards, for, as was stated in court, he
was perilously near a very much graver sentence.
CHAPTER XII
I say good-bye to the Yard—Anarchism nowadays—Dramatic moves
of the last few years—More arms and ammunition seized—The
Ziniovieff Letter—the truth—The Arcos Raid and its conse¬
quences—Will England ever tolerate a Russian Dictator ?
T HE work of a detective must surely be among the
hardest of the world’s tasks to lay aside. When I
was a young man, I used to look forward to the
time when I would be able to live at ease in the country.
In practice, I have found that I spend just as much time
on detective work now that I am retired as I used to do
when I was at the Yard. But now, of course, it is not
official. But for all that I have handled one or two interest¬
ing little cases of late years, especially over work done in
connection with the Department of Military Intelligence.
Of those, unfortunately, I may not speak; but I think any
record of anti-anarchist work in England would be incom¬
plete without some reference to the Zinovieff Letter and
the Arcos Raid. I had no official connection with either,
having then retired; but I think I may be able to throw
light on a few points in both which may interest the public.
Before either of them, however, a Yard raid took place
which had fairly fruitful results. That was just two months
after my retirement, and the detective officer of the Special
Branch who was in charge of it was intimately known to me.
Information was received that certain munitions of war
were loaded aboard a ship at that moment lying in the
Victoria Docks. A lightning raid took place, and the
vessel was systematically searched. Under a great cargo
90
ANARCHISM
9 i
of bales in the hold were discovered 67 rifles and 7,000
rounds of ammunition; and the skipper was asked to
explain. He protested innocence, but was requested to
answer for the contraband before other authorities. Only
a week later, another ship was raided, and its hold gave up
up 37 automatic pistols and 3,000 rounds of ammunition!
On those discoveries, since I did not myself investigate
the cases, I have no comments to make; but I believe that
the Yard had a good many, and that other important
discoveries were made as a result.
The General Strike of 1926, if not directly or completely
an anarchist effort to seize the reins of Government from
the King and Parliament, was, according to certain author¬
ities at the time, considerably financed from Moscow, the
money being sent officially to “ help our comrades in distress
in England.” Whatever the intention, the effect was to
prolong the Strike towards a point where it might have
resulted in the rule of our Empire being given over to
the officials of the Trades Unions, had not the humour,
common-sense and courage of the enormous majority of
Britishers made that Strike a mere colossal joke. Volunteers
in tens of thousands besieged railway stations, begging for
a chance to realize a childhood ambition to drive puff-puffs.
Underground trains were run almost from the first day by
delighted college and university boys. ’Buses bearing such
legends as “ Don’t throw stones at the passengers—they
are in sufficient danger already!” and “Admission on
business only ” (the latter over broken windows) traversed
the streets at speeds hitherto unknown. Special Constables
whose sole uniform was an armlet drank tea from the
billycans of striker pickets and enthusiastically took bets
on the date of the collapse of the Strike. Instead of paralysis
descending on the whole country and streets being left
dark, unguarded and unscavenged, volunteers got all vital
TRAITORS WITHIN
92
services running at once and time-tables were back almost
to normal within twelve days; and in laughter which
reverberated all over Europe the terrible strike collapsed,
its chief achievement having been so to cripple Trades
Union funds that the working men themselves (who never
wanted to strike at all) will feel the shortage painfully for
years to come.
The general facts about the Zinovieff Letter of 1924 are
too well known to need reiteration. One or two details
about it, however, may not be quite so familiar. It con¬
tained wild statements about seducing British troops from
their loyalty, causing revolution in this country, and using
the British communists as tools whereby the work of
incendiarism could be carried out safely by its Russian
instigators, who, if “ victory ” was gained, would then come
in and take the profits. The letter was indited in a tone
of utter contempt for the British communists, and was on
the lines of Zinovieff’s admitted policy of “ supporting
Mr. MacDonald as the rope supports the hanging man.”
The letter came to light in somewhat the same way as
the gunpowder plot of Guy Fawkes. A copy of it was
said to have been shown to a London business man by an
agent who was a friend of his, on the ground that he had
better take certain action in regard to some of his Govern¬
ment securities. He, it is alleged, copied the letter and
handed it at once to the police authorities. High Govern¬
ment officials were warned, and it was decided to publish
the contents of the letter in all the leading newspapers, as
warning to British people of all political opinions as to what
Russia intended for them. Meanwhile, the police pursued
enquiries as to the authenticity of the letter. It is still
forbidden to say what those enquiries were, under the
Official Secrets Acts; but I know personally the Inspectors
who were in charge of them, and I know that absolute and
ANARCHISM
93
irrefutable proof was obtained that the letter was genuine.
And, indeed, what more striking endorsement was necessary
than that Zinovieff was shortly afterwards ignominiously
dismissed from the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party, for having so seriously blundered.
Of the Arcos Raid, a little more may now be disclosed.
That story began by the disappearance of a highly confiden¬
tial document from the War Office; and although feverish
activities immediately resulted in the Special Department,
the public was told nothing. One after another, clues were
picked up, and every one led straight to the headquarters
of the All Russian Co-operative Society at Soviet House
in Moorgate, E.C. This concern, briefly known as ARCOS,
had already been in trouble a number of times and its
legal adviser had been deported a short while previously.
Consequently, a raid was immediately organized and
carried out on May 12th, 1927, by the Special Department
detectives.
Policemen ran from room to room, constables prevented
all attempts to enter or leave the building, clerks were told
to sit where they were, and a quantity of papers were
confiscated for examination. Meanwhile, the senior officer
in charge of the raid made his way swiftly to the cypher room.
That room had no handle to the door, and a slight delay
was caused because of the difficulty in entering it. Mean¬
while the officer could hear the frantic rustling and shuffling
of papers within. Finally, in a frenzy of impatience, he
forced his way in, and gripped by the collar the secret
room’s single occupant—a middle-aged clerk who was
savagely thrusting documents on to a pile of burning papers
in the fireplace. That room was the only one in the building
which had a fireplace!
Flinging his man into the charge of a sergeant who had
just entered, the detective pulled off the papers from the
TRAITORS WITHIN
94
fire and tried to smother the flames, burning his hands
in doing so. The clerk struggled fiercely to prevent him,
but was capably held back. Beneath the building was
discovered a secret photostat room. Absolute proofs were
found that for years Arcos had been nothing but a clearing
house and link between anarchist agitators in Russia and
their agents here.
On May 20th, 1927, all diplomatic privileges were
withdrawn from the Soviet, and the guilty Arcos represen¬
tatives were ordered to leave the country within ten days.
Even the British Labour representatives were disgusted
at this open abuse of British hospitality, and later admin¬
istered several severe rebuffs to their Soviet comrades as a
direct result of the Arcos trouble.
There is, I think, little more I can say about my personal
contact with anarchism in England and its results. I have
dealt in this book with facts known to me and which either
I myself or detective friends of mine have checked beyond
possibility of error. No intention has been present to
make my stories alarmist propaganda against anarchism;
I believe, indeed, that the sound sense of our nation will
prevent any such outbreak as took place in Russia when
the Tsar was deposed and murdered and the reins of power
seized by a brutal minority, who succeeded in holding them
only by terrorism. That era is passing in Russia already,
and with its passing a good deal of danger to ourselves
passes also.
King George is not in personal danger, partly because
of the never-sleeping efficiency of Scotland Yard but
chiefly because the loyalty and regard of his people is so
great that no anarchist would dare to attempt his life.
Anarchists are, as a rule, contemptible cowards, and never
if they can help it risk their own precious skins in their
murder attempts. I would not say, however, that England
ANARCHISM
95
is entirely safe from sporadic outbreaks, fostered among
miserable out-of-works by ingratiating foreign agitators,
who, as in the past, would offer to supply arms and ammuni¬
tion to those who were crazed and starved enough to use
them. When a man’s wife and children are hungry, he
will do most things; and the anarchist agents use devilish
cunning in fostering such conditions by advising strikes
and then making use of them. Such outbreaks, more or
less severe, are bound to mean heartbreaking tragedy.
For the sake of the population, law and order must be
maintained, and sections of the community which prove
dangerous to the rest must be disarmed in the cause of
civil peace. Scotland Yard does its best to prevent such
stores of arms and ammunition from being made or dis¬
tributed, and to stop the spreading of leaflets drawn up by
callous self-seekers who speciously ask the working man
to fight and die so that those who draw up the leaflets may
draw the profits in a revolutionary state.
The real remedy, however, lies in the hands of the
British working men themselves, and in the simple advice
to think well before they act. The men who seek to lure
them on to revolution against their King are, in nearly
every case, foreigners—Russians, Jews, Italians and Span¬
iards who have been deported from their own countries
because they were useless there. They are men who live,
not by honest work themselves but by receiving traitor’s
gold; they ask loyal Englishmen to share that gold with
them. They are selfish, callous, brutal, cowardly, creeping
creatures, working in the dark because they are ashamed
of honest daylight, and behind their loudest protestations
and their biggest crocodile tears may be found always an
infinite consideration for their own profit and safety. Let
them throw their own bombs and do their own fighting,
and this country need never do more than laugh at them.
TRAITORS WITHIN
96
But give them too much rein, act on their oily arguments
without pausing to weigh them, and the British Monarchy
and honour will be swept away together and a foreigner
raised to be our Empire’s dictator within the next twenty
years.
BOOK II
ESPIONAGE
CHAPTER I
How the Spy system works—Spies in peace-time—Spy Clubs—
Letter-boxes ; travelling agents ; carrier pigeons—How informa¬
tion is sent overseas—When the Kaiser visited us—I am decorated
by him.
S O much nonsense has recently been written about the
sober business of espionage by emotional ladies who,
having once extracted an unimportant secret from a
soldier friend, now feel entitled to publish hysterical
meanderings anent their “ adventures,” that the public has
perhaps begun to wonder whether spies really exist or not.
As the individual responsible for having had a number
of them shot at the Tower, I can say confidently that
they do! I can also say that my experience goes to show
that there are few women spies, and that they are counted
too unreliable to be of much actual danger. Mata Hari,
now that romance has been busy dressing her sordid figure
in frills of fancy, has become prettily effective to the
imagination; but before I ran them to earth, two of the
men whose stories I shall tell later were responsible for
the German raids on Scarborough and Whitby, and that is
stronger stuff.
Espionage, in actual fact, is a nasty, dangerous, thankless
task. Often, it is deputed to criminals, who, having
formerly shown considerable cunning, are released from a
long prison sentence on promising to act as secret service
agents abroad. It must be understood that I speak of the
methods of foreign countries—if Great Britain employs
spies, I know nothing of them, since my own work has
99
ioo TRAITORS WITHIN
only been in the direction of spy detection. Spies are paid
wages just like you and I, but they don’t usually get them
regularly. They are forced to trust to the honour of those
who employ them; and, as the latter prefer to pay by
results, and the agents, if they are to live, must be paid
more regularly than that, trouble ensues. I have seen a
good many secret spy letters, and a good twenty-five per
cent, of them included really frantic appeals for money
with which to buy the bare necessities of life. On the
whole I am heartily sorry for spies; they have a rotten time
and a nasty end, unless they are exceptionally lucky.
Here, briefly, is the system on which all espionage is
carried out. A man, disgraced or anxious to leave his own
country, is approached by certain authorities and told that
his passage will be paid and a certain wage guaranteed him
if he will undertake in writing to act as a spy. If he does
so, he is usually asked to discover some definite bit of
information, such as the disposition of coal in the seaports
of a country supposedly inimical, or the tests being carried
out with some new gun. In certain cases, he is sent first
to an official spy school, where he is instructed in the use
and manufacture of various “ inks,” which dry on paper
leaving no mark, but will become visible on heating or
treating with some suitable chemical. There, also, he
learns how to correspond with his headquarters when he
has succeeded in collecting useful information.
Such a school as this was run during the War in the
occupied part of Belgium, and I shall have something more
to say of it in my chapters on war-time spying. Of the spy
clubs, “ letter boxes,” travelling agents, carrier pigeons
and other methods of transferring items of information,
however, I had best give some details now, for the sake of
subsequent clarity. The spy at the school is commonly
directed that his first place of call, when he arrives in the
ESPIONAGE
IOI
country where he is to work, will be a certain club, where
he is to ask for a specified individual. To this man he is
to give signs, or perhaps introductory letters. Meanwhile,
he is to pursue activities which will give the impression that
he is an innocent visitor. Perhaps he is to act as if he
were a commercial traveller, tourist, or newspaper corre¬
spondent, or anything which gives him reason for travelling
and sight-seeing, and for asking leading questions. Before
the War in Rotterdam a block of offices bore the name
“ Dierks & Co.” Officially that firm traded all sorts of
commodities to Britain, and had many representatives here;
actually it was just a clearing house for information from
spies in England. The name of Dierks & Co. features a
good deal in this story later on.
Arrived at the Club the newcomer discovers it to be,
in most cases, a small and select affair known perhaps as
“ The British Ruritanians’ Society,” the name correspond¬
ing to his own nationality. Most of the members are honest
traders who meet and talk tenderly of “ home ” over their
lager and sauerkraut; but one or two—those, in fact, to
whom the letters of introduction are addressed—are
adventurers like himself. From them he receives warnings
of any anti-spy activities of the moment, brings whatever
verbal messages have been entrusted to him, arranges for
his letters to be received and passed on by a suitable agent,
and then takes himself off to the particular station where
his spying is to be done.
If possible, he receives help from a local agent, and
perhaps stays as a guest at the latter’s house. He discovers
whatever he can by any methods that suggest themselves
to him, and sends his news, generally written in some form
of “ invisible ink ” between the lines of an innocuous letter
from one friend to another, to the agent who is to handle
his correspondence, This agent, living in the same country,
io2 TRAITORS WITHIN
sends on the information in a letter of his own; it may>
for safety’s sake, go to two or three addresses in, say>
England, before finally going abroad invisibly written
between the lines of an ordinary innocent business letter.
Nearly always, there is an intermediary firm to whom
it is sent—a firm like Dierks & Co., situate in a country
which would be non-belligerent in almost any struggle,
and may therefore be expected to be neutral in time of
possible war. This firm, receiving the letter, passes on
the news in its own fashion to its real employers. Neces¬
sarily there is some delay in getting important information
across, and if the risk seems worth it, the news may be
sent direct to the firm in the neutral country. It was
through such efforts to expedite vital news that many of
the captures of spies by Scotland Yard were made during
the War.
One point is that the presence of an intermediary firm
makes cover for the sending of the wages of the “ employee ”
at regular intervals. This is all right in theory, but in
practice there seems to be a notable shortage of revenue
to be spent on spies’ wages. Urgent appeals are often
followed by threats that, if more money is not forthcoming
soon, the agent will take himself off on a different line of
business, either honest or perhaps the selling of information
from the country that has been so miserly over his stipend.
Then follows a smooth warning, couched in terms that
cannot be misunderstood. Unless the spy behaves himself,
and works harder in future, information will be allowed
to leak out that he is a spy, and his employers, denying all
responsibility for him, will self-righteously demand that
he be punished for attempting to endanger the friendly
relations between two great and trusting powers! Usually,
with such a letter, a little money is enclosed.
So the discordant game goes on, with fear, cupidity,
ESPIONAGE
103
suspicion and veiled menace as its keynotes. If it is con¬
sidered safe, the information may perhaps be sent by
carrier pigeon. Once the bird is safely released, the
method is a good one, for it is not likely to be stopped
before reaching its destination, and even if it is, there is
no trace of its port of departure. Before the War, a number
of aliens on the East Coast were asked not to keep pigeons;
it seemed a favourite pastime with them, and they usually
bred fast carriers quite extensively. It is only fair to say,
however, that none of them were actually caught in the
act of despatching information in that way.
All these general facts were known to Scotland Yard
long before the War, just as they were known to the police
services of all civilized nations. Like everyone else, we
tried to keep watch on suspected aliens, and in one or two
cases, I personally had the job of arresting known spies,
and proving their guilt in court. Their stories I shall tell
in my next two chapters. Apart from those examples,
there were times when I had reason to suspect people
against whom I could prove nothing; I will give a brief
list of facts here which subsequently showed in a more
sinister light.
In 1909, a club was being run in Piccadilly Circus
organized, according to report, by a German Army Colonel
and a certain German ex-Naval officer. That winter a
number of German members of the club hunted with
British packs, and it was a significant point that all were
cavalry officers of notable crack regiments. It was said
at the time, perhaps without foundation, that these officers
were considering the land over which they rode more with
a cavalryman’s eye than a hunter’s.
A German by the name of Martinns Seidler managed
to pass himself off for a short time as a Dutchman, until
I found reason to believe that his passport was not in
TRAITORS WITHIN
104
order. On examination it proved to be false, and he was
duly interned; luckily for himself he had not then even
had time to begin his spying activities. Had he done so,
the War then being in progress, he would have suffered
a sharper check.
A somewhat similar case was that of the brother of a
certain Continental Countess. I raided this man’s flat in
North London, but he also only paid the penalty of an
untrustworthy alien in the land of a country at war—he
was interned.
On the whole, spies in this country did not get a great
deal of encouragement. They were not very difficult to
deal with, for we had a perfect organization with which to
counter them, and we had, even in pre-war days, a very
considerable amount of theoretical knowledge of the details
of their methods such as would have caused something
approaching heart failure in certain high quarters abroad,
had we paraded it. Instead of which, of course, we deliber¬
ately posed as simple old John Bull, and hid our smile
behind our hand while the enemy walked gaily into our
traps.
In 1911, when the Kaiser visited England, I had the
job of attending him on his tour because, at that time,
I was acquainted with the playful ways of our anarchists,
and was able to assist in keeping his royal person safe
from attack. In my duties I naturally came into contact
with him personally, and then I had need of all my tact.
As a man I did not dislike him; he seemed impulsive,
good-natured, quick in anger or in forgiveness, and tremen¬
dously, vitally interested in all that he saw. He was for
ever asking questions, making comments, or turning to
one of his secretaries to order him to note some investigation
that was to be made.
He was, I remember, intensely interested in aviation.
ESPIONAGE
'05
At that time most European countries except Germany
scoffed at the idea of flying; not so the Kaiser. What
astonished him, I believe, more than anything else he saw
in this country was our lack of what is now called “ air¬
mindedness.” All Germany was interested in the experi¬
mental work of Count Zeppelin, while to our people
general flying was still something of a joke.
We had no special trouble from anarchists while the
Kaiser was here, and my duties were not arduous. I was
rather surprised, therefore, when soon after our distinguished
visitor had left our shores, I received an official communi¬
cation saying that his Imperial Majesty was pleased to
recognize my services on his behalf by conferring on me
the famous order of Officer of the Red Eagle of Prussia.
I have the jewelled decoration in a case on the wall of my
office, and it is before me now as I write. The tragic War
Lord little thought, when conferring it, that I should next
come to his notice as agent in the detection of his spies
in England.
CHAPTER II
I arrest a Doctor of Philosophy during the Agadir incident—What
he wanted to know about our Navy—He asked a solicitor to help
him!—The Spy School at Amsterdam loses a promising pupil.
T HIS is a story of the River Yealm and Plymouth
Hoe in 1911, where a descendant of the Admiral
who “ finished his game and beat the Spaniards
too ” played another and more scientific game with a
pupil of the Rotterdam Spy School, and won that also.
And it happened at a time when all Europe was desperately
uneasy at the first gathering war-clouds on the horizon,
still no bigger than a man’s hand, and at the warning
rumble of distant thunder at Agadir when Sir Edward
Grey in his own subsequent words “ thought the Fleet
might be attacked at any moment ” by the Germans.
A German Ober-Lieutenant of the 15th Hussar Regi¬
ment took a lease of the Egret houseboat, then lying on the
Yealm near Plymouth, and a very pleasant gentleman he
seemed. He speedily made acquaintance with a number
of Plymouth people, moving in the best society, and giving
delightfully tasteful parties on his boat. Particularly, he
invited to such functions young naval men with go-ahead
ideas; and he would entertain them with lively arguments
on the efficiency of the German cavalry, and take a deep
interest in their own “ shop ” talk about naval manoeuvres
and the future developments of naval warfare. His wines,
which were of the best, were unstinted, but it seems that
he found our pre-war young Naval officers uncommonly
steady in the head, for he was forced to try other methods
of obtaining the information he needed.
106
ESPIONAGE
107
Particularly he became friends with a hard-headed local
solicitor of Scottish descent, and a local gentleman descended
on the maternal side from Sir Francis Drake. With these
two men, in the comfortable cabin of his houseboat, he
talked evening after evening, discussing the possibilities
of the new and powerful German Navy in war (but never
telling anything not already publicly known), and asking
all sorts of searching leading questions about British Naval
matters. He laughingly referred to the Morocco trouble,
and asked his friends, “ out of interest as a debatable
subject,” what chances they thought the British Navy
would have if war resulted, for at that time our respective
statesmen were at one another’s throats. Germany, he
said, could muster all her new fleet in a dozen hours;
Britain would have to recall her ships from the four quarters
of the globe, and Germany could break up each squadron
or little fleet in detail before any real combination could
be effected. What steps, he asked, would be taken to
prevent such a thing—just as an argument!
At the same time, these two gentlemen discovered,
Dr. Schultz (he was a Doctor of Philosophy at a famous
German College) was asking all sorts of questions of his
young Naval acquaintances as to whether sailors were being
recalled from leave, which ships were provendered, coaled
and ready to leave port at a moment’s notice, what orders
various warships had received, how soon our Mediterranean
Fleet and our Eastern Fleet could be brought into home
waters, and so on. The Herr Ober-Lieutenant was still as
charming as ever, and he asked his questions casually or
playfully; but he began to arouse suspicion. One morning,
when I went to report at the Yard, I was told the facts of
the case and told to run down to Plymouth and amuse
myself for a few days.
I called on the solicitor and found that there was definite
io8 TRAITORS WITHIN
reason why Dr. Schultz should have professional attention.
The previous night he had propounded to my vis-a-vis
and his friend a scheme of startling simplicity. He
explained that he was an agent for a great German news¬
paper syndicate, and that his present task was to collect
interesting news about England, particularly in connection
with her Army and Navy. What he wanted, he explained,
was to obtain the services of one or two educated men whose
position enabled them to get interesting news stories, and
from them obtain a regular supply of articles on Naval
matters suitable for publication in leading German news¬
papers. If, in addition, they could supply occasional
articles from outspoken Naval officers on such matters as
the development of battleship construction, the relative
questions of armour and guns, the activity of British
submarines and so on, he would be well pleased. Pay,
he said, was high; he could offer them £50 to £60 for a
trial month if really good exclusive material was available,
and a regular income of £ i,000 to £1,500 a year thereafter.
The two gentlemen had asked for time to consider the
proposition; I had a talk with both of them and suggested
that they might offer to comply with the terms subject
to a clause that Dr. Schultz would require them to do
nothing dishonourable or to harm their country. After
all, the man might be all he said, in which case it would be
foolish to turn down his offer, subject to that one clause;
or if he were a spy, we should then have definite evidence
to go upon. Meanwhile, I made arrangements with the
postal authorities to note the destinations of his letters.
He was delighted, and immediately wrote letters to a
“ M. Pierre Thissen ” at Ostend. That time, Scotland
Yard was one up on Herr Steinhauer, the German Secret
Service chief, for we knew perfectly well that “ M. Thissen ”
was really Max Tobler, head of the German spy school at
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109
Rotterdam. And, sure enough, the replies to Dr. Schultz
were postmarked Rotterdam. I thought my suspicions
justified me in opening the reply letters. In addition to a
considerable sum of money, they contained congratulations
on the “ speed with which you have conducted this busi¬
ness,” and a warning to keep clear of the “ damned English
Police.”
The next step was taken by the solicitor, who entered
into the spirit of the thing with a dry, judicial humour.
He drew up a regular lawyer’s agreement that he would
act as military and naval correspondent for the South Coast
of England, and he and Schultz both signed it. Finally,
he took it back to his office to make a minor alteration,
and on the way called at the house of a friend. I was
waiting at that house, and I took a copy of the document
before it was posted back again to Dr. Schultz. Between
us that solicitor and myself concocted some tall yarns,
which we duly passed on to Schultz, who was almost
purring with complacence at the success of his plans.
If his employers really believed those stories about imaginary
British battleships (including one, which we said was
under design, which was to be fitted with short metal wings
to enable it to skim the surface for greater speed!) they
must have been even more solemn than we supposed.
Schultz himself, however, was no fool, and despite our
greatest precautions, he came along to the solicitor one
morning fuming with rage and fear. I was talking over our
next moves at the time, and at the announcement of the
visitor I had to slip into an adjoining room. Schultz said
that he had reason to believe that his letters were being
tampered with “ by a rival newspaper gang in England.”
His new friend was ready for that. “ Have your letters
addressed in future at my office,” he said sympathetically,
while I grinned appreciatingly at his tones. “ And cable
no TRAITORS WITHIN
your important communications in code; no one would
suspect then.” Schultz was vastly relieved, and our
amazing information went thereafter from the lawyer’s
office, where I could study the communications without
any danger of discovery.
However, the affair was not really a joke, and we had to
bring it to an end. A letter from Tobler at Rotterdam
said that there must be “no more of these cursed cables ”
in case suspicion was aroused. The letter went on—
“ How do matters stand with the Commander and Lieu¬
tenant ” (two visionary figures I myself had constructed).
“ The Reserve officers you ask about are no use—they
cannot procure us any valuable secrets because they have
not access to official books and reports. You must work
harder. Unless more information is forthcoming, no
more money will be paid. Let me know whether we can
meet in Holland or Belgium, and whether you can bring
the Commander or Lieutenant with you. Official informa¬
tion is what is wanted, and this you must secure at all
costs.”
That letter I commandeered, and with it in my pocket
I went aboard the Egret to see Dr. Schultz. When I told
him he was a spy, he looked at me in silence, while I could
hear the water lapping against the vessel’s side. I expected
a violent denial, but the Professor of Philosophy was
uppermost at that moment. “ I must congratulate you
on the efficacy of your Police, sir,” he said calmly. “ I
presume you will give me time to pack a toothbrush and
some pyjamas ? ” On the way to the station, he admitted
that he was not altogether sorry the game was up. “ I am
an officer, not a spy,” he declared passionately. “ I have
hated this work from the beginning, but they exerted
pressure on me to come here. Fighting—yes; but not
this kind of thing! ”
ESPIONAGE
111
He was tried at Plymouth for espionage, and convicted
without any chance of a favourable verdict, for the evidence
was very strong. His sentence was twenty-one months
in the second division, and I think the Bench was really
rather sorry for him. I was myself; but of course we
could not tolerate that sort of thing in this country.
As little as possible was said at the trial concerning
Mr. Thissen of Ostend, and his double, Mr. Tobler of
Rotterdam. But that eminent gentleman either took fright
or—more probably—was officially moved on. At any
rate, he was superseded within a month of Schultz’s con¬
viction, by a man of the name of R. H. Peterssen, and
Tobler himself dropped out of our records. I am sure the
German authorities were not aware of the fact that we
were so cognizant of their movements, or they would have
been more wary; also, I think that Herr Tobler did not
figure again in active spy work against this country.
Why, I cannot say. Perhaps he was returned to his
old Army commission, though I do not fancy so. Perhaps
he was convicted on some trumpery charge and sent to
prison to reflect on his folly in bungling that promising
case of the Plymouth spy. Perhaps he committed suicide
in despair at an official reprimand. We do not know.
He just slipped back into that impenetrable blackness
from which spies emerge and into which, unless they are
very lucky, they in time return. Usually, that blackness is
death; for once the unsleeping eye of the Yard is on them,
they do not often elude it. For the sake of our country’s
safety, we cannot afford to forget even for a moment the
whereabouts of a man whose name has once been docketed
in our “ Espionage ” pigeon-holes at Westminster, until
the last entry of all is neatly made in red ink, giving name,
date and place, and the mystic letters, O.K.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Peterssen comes into action—Captain Grant makes a mistake—
An old friend—The Navy sees it through—Exit Heinrich Grosse;
the girl he left behind him.
M R. PETERSSEN of Rotterdam, whatever his
faults, was a “ go-getter ”! He picked up the
challenge his predecessor, Herr Tobler, had
been forced to drop; he set out at once to try to obtain that
longed-for information about the dreaded British Navy.
If anything, Mr. Peterssen was a trifle over-eager; he
would have been wiser to let things settle down a little first.
William Salter, a retired naval man living in Portsmouth,
found his pension of five shillings a day not enough to
supply many luxuries, and in the hope of augmenting it
put an advertisement in a local paper offering to do enquiry
work. He received only one answer to the advertisement,
but that interested him a good deal. It was from a certain
Captain Grant, asking if Salter would carry out enquiries
concerning Naval coal supplies at Portsmouth, and suggest¬
ing an interview. The old sea-dog (which is exactly what
Salter looked like) must have seemed a simple and unsus¬
pecting tool to Captain Grant at that interview; at least,
the man seems to have hidden very little from him.
Captain Grant explained in perfect English that he was
the representative of a certain famous German coal magnate,
one Herr Peterssen of Hamburg. This great man had
heard rumours of a forthcoming coal strike in England,
and he wished to know which ports were inadequately
supplied with coal so that, the moment the strike broke out,
112
ESPIONAGE
113
he could sell German coal in those ports. He asked Salter
what his pension was, sympathized with him on what he
called a miserly return for a life of service, and said that he
himself earned ^15 a month, a reasonable proportion of
which might be deflected into Salter’s pockets if he proved
useful. Even at that first interview, he seems to have
taken it for granted that he was dealing with a traitor, for
he broadly hinted that he would also pay to know the
number of men aboard certain war vessels then in Ports¬
mouth Harbour.
He would have been alarmed had he followed Salter
when the latter stumped off after the interview, having
promised to give a definite answer later. For the old
seaman went straight to the Admiral-Superintendent of
the Port and laid the facts before him. After a few minutes’
conversation, that officer asked Salter if he was willing to
keep the spy in play while the authorities were informed,
and, from what I know of Salter, I imagine he might so
far have overcome his awe of authority as to hazard a
comprehensive wink. Anyway, the next day he went
along to Captain Grant with a list of “ facts,” and mean¬
while I was telephoned for to make a visit to Portsmouth.
My first place of call was Captain Grant’s lodging, at
the house of a Mrs. Jackson at Southsea. She herself
was a sailor’s wife, and she had no suspicion of her lodger.
In fact, so far had he advanced in her good graces that he
was actually out fishing with her pretty daughter when I
called at the house, and I learned that he used to go out
with her almost every afternoon. I showed my authority
and went up to have a look at his room.
For a spy, he was a singularly unsuspicious man. His
desk was unlocked and open, with a litter of papers spread
untidily across it. On top of the desk was a photograph
of himself and a girl whom I took to be Miss Jackson;
H
TRAITORS WITHIN
114
and there was something about the heavy face of the man
that seemed vaguely familiar. In the desk, I came across
a big-scale map of Portsmouth Dockyard, an automatic
pistol fully loaded and with a good deal of loose ammunition
beside it, a number of letters in German or English, and
three letters the arrangement of whose German words
seemed to me a little unnatural. I am familiar with the
German language, and I sat down on the bed in that little
room and spent ten precious minutes trying to puzzle out
why the words were arranged in that somewhat stilted
style.
At last, I gave it up, and rapidly copied the contents
of the letters that puzzled me before returning them to
their place in the desk. Finally, having made everything
shipshape, I went away, warning Mrs. Jackson to say
nothing of my visit.
That night was a busy one for me. First of all, I made
a number of telephonic enquiries to Scotland Yard, asking
for certain details concerning their photographic records
of dangerous criminals, and requesting a selection of a
named dozen or so old photographs therefrom. Then I
sat down in my own lodgings and had a go at the copies
of those three letters. I have always been interested in
cyphers, but that one very nearly beat me. Finally, after
hours of puzzling and covering sheet after sheet of paper
with attempted solutions, I discovered the clues. For half
an hour more I worked, making decyphered records of
those three letters. Then, straightening my back with a
groan, I saw that my windows were palely lighted. I had
spent the whole night at my puzzles!
I got a couple of hours’ sleep and then went along to
to see the Admiral-Superintendent. I took him a copy of
my night’s work, and very grim he was about it. He said
that Salter had instructions to go back to see our man that
ESPIONAGE
ii*
morning, as he had been coached in certain information
which he was to seek concerning “ Captain Grant.”
To fill in the time before I could make my arrest, there¬
fore, I made a few enquiries in the neighbourhood of
Captain Grant’s lodging. Sure enough, he had been
asking in various places about supplies of coal in the
Dockyard, names of war vessels in port, their armament,
and so on. At a little newsagent’s shop, the proprietor
told me that Captain Grant, who was a customer of his,
had made extensive enquiries because his (the news¬
agent’s) son was in the Navy. Grant had said that he had
a bet with another man on the number of men of all ranks
in Portsmouth, and, unsuspiciously enough, the newsagent
had tried to discover the number for him. Finally, I went
back to my own lodgings, and found a man waiting there
for me. He had come post-haste down from the Yard
that morning with some proofed copies of photographs
from the Records Department. I turned over the reddish,
rather indistinct prints slowly—and suddenly saw staring
up at me the face of the man in the picture at Grant’s
lodgings. It was thinner, tighter and bearded instead of
clean-shaven, but there was no mistaking it. I turned
the picture over; on the back was scrawled—“Heinrich
Grosse, Captain German Merchant Service, arrested Ham¬
burg 10/8/11 on charge forgery, released after two days’
imprisonment, believed sent England. Convicted Singa¬
pore 1898 for uttering forged notes. 10 years’ penal
servitude.”
I had noted the photograph when it was first filed,
in the ordinary way of my duty as a member of the Special
Department, and my memory had not played me false. I
locked the picture in my despatch-case together with the
cyphered copies of the letters, and then made a number
of enquiries about my quarry. I ascertained from the
ii 6 TRAITORS WITHIN
Detective-Constable I had left near the house that “ Grant ”
had not yet emerged for his afternoon stroll with Miss
Jackson, and then went in. He was standing in the little
parlour, all ready dressed to go out, a soft grey hat and smart
cane in his hand, talking to Mrs. Jackson, and as I entered,
the girl, a dark, handsome little thing, came tripping into
the room.
“ I’m very sorry, Miss Jackson,” I said apologetically,
“ but I’m afraid I must arrest Captain Grant, on a charge
of espionage.”
The girl changed colour, but that was all. Grosse
himself shouted, “ It’s a lie! ” and half raised his stick to
attack me. Then he thought better of it. “ Don’t believe
him, my dear,” he muttered, “ the man must be mad.
It will soon be cleared up and I’ll be back here.” Mrs.
Jackson went over to comfort her daughter, and I took my
man away. It was one of those little tragic cameos that
come into a policeman’s life not infrequently; but as it
proved after, the girl was perhaps luckier than she might
have been had she married him.
He was tried at Portsmouth Town Hall on December
12th, 1911, and I produced the decyphered copies of the
three letters I had seen on his desk, and also the originals
which I had collected after his arrest. All three were from
R. H. Peterssen, the successor to Herr Tobler of Rotter¬
dam. The cypher was a cunning one, allowing the final
letter to read quite innocently as a business communication
about prices of coal in England and the possibilities of
selling German coal here in the event of a strike.
Decyphered, letter number one stated that the writer
had received the dossier of Herr Grosse from a known
source, and also facts that showed that he could be useful
to him. Certain information would be given, said the
writer, and if the answers proved satisfactory, Herr Grosse
ESPIONAGE
117
would be released from his prison sentence under super¬
vision. He was then to proceed to Hamburg railway
station, and there he would find a man waiting for him who
would carry a handkerchief in the left hand. He, Herr
Grosse, was also to carry a handkerchief so, in order that
recognition might be effected.
The second letter confirmed Herr Grosse’s appointment
as “ an accredited agent in the service of the Fatherland,”
and promised that regular payments should be made him
if his information was of a useful kind. Both letters were
quite innocent on the surface, and would never have
aroused suspicion but for the fact that they were phrased,
in order to comply with the cypher rules, in a somewhat
archaic and awkward style.
The third letter was the one before which Herr Grosse’s
case gave way. It said: “ Is it really true that the new
submarines are being fitted out with guns ? How and
where are these mounted ? Where are the guns stored for
arming merchant steamers in war time ? What sort of
guns have the mine-laying cruisers Naiad , Thetis and
Latona ? Have these got wireless ? How much coal is
there on shore ? Is there no more coal in the dockyards
than stated ? More details required about the systems of
range-finding. Your information about a 4 floating conning-
tower ’ is surely imaginary ? More details needed about
the new British howitzers. What range have they ? "
As usual, it was signed by R. H. Peterssen.
Grosse was committed to Winchester Assizes. His
defence was useless under the weight of evidence against
him, and he was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude.
That ended in September 1914, after the outbreak of war,
and consequently, on his release, he was re-arrested and
interned, and died before the War ended. At his Ports¬
mouth trial, I noted Mrs. Jackson and her daughter in the
TRAITORS WITHIN
118
court, but they were not present at the Winchester Assizes.
At the pronouncement of the spy’s sentence in the latter,
however, a girl in the court broke down and had to be
taken outside. She was a German, and said she was
Grosse’s fiancee; and she was heartbroken as much at the
attentions he had paid to Miss Jackson of Southsea as at
his subsequent sentence for spying. I never saw or heard
of her again.
CHAPTER IV
Herr Steinhauerpays us a visit, incognito—When the War broke out—
Preparing for new duties.
I N 1912 we were honoured by a visit from the man
who had been, in 1905, according to our police records,
made head of the German Secret Service. A personal
friend of the Kaiser, a handsome, soldierly figure who
had seen more of courts than camps, the Herr Steinhauer
was an exceedingly efficient choice for the position. A
brilliant educational record showed exceptional mental
abilities; he was possessed of a diplomatic mind as well as
an unlimited capacity for organization, and he took up
espionage control, as far as can be ascertained, as his own
choice, having specially asked the boon of promotion to
the post from his royal master.
He certainly never lacked courage. It was reported
that he visited England in 1908, and three years later a
detective at Southampton believed that he caught a glimpse
of the keen, dark face of the spy chief among a crowd
coming from the docks after the berthing of a great liner.
All efforts to trace him, however, were abortive, and
though there were several German names on the passenger
list, they all seemed quite innocent ones. But in 1912,
in the middle of July, he was noticed on the platform at
York; and from that moment till he stepped aboard an
insignificant German-bound vessel at Harwich he was
never entirely unattended.
From York he went to London, and took up quarters
119
120 TRAITORS WITHIN
at a big hotel under the name of Mr. Max Westhaus.
He spent most of his time writing letters, of which we
subsequently noted the addresses for future reference.
Eight of the men to whom those letters were addressed
were arrested trying to leave for Germany in August,
1914; one died before the outbreak of war, and only three
have since given no cause for suspicion, and so are pre¬
sumed to be ordinary, peaceable citizens. One spy sent
by Steinhauer was captured in Ireland, and later shot at
the Tower, another hanged himself in gaol while awaiting
trial.
On the morning following his arrival in London, Mr.
Westhaus went along to call on a friend at an alien club in
Piccadilly Circus. As the club was, in its way, an exclusive
one, we had no chance of discovering what Mr. Westhaus
wanted to say at that interview, and so, when the friend was
on his way to keep the appointment, his taxi broke down.
The “ fare ” was a short-tempered man, and after several
minutes’ delay, he cursed the driver roundly, and tried to
walk off to pick up another vehicle without having paid
that part of his fare which was owing. The taxi-man,
who corresponded singularly with the official police measure¬
ments, promptly ran him back into the taxi again, and
warned him not to get out at his peril. Offers of payment
were useless now, for the driver’s dignity was aroused.
It took fifteen minutes to put that engine right, and then
the driver, in an excess of misguided haste, nearly ran
down a policeman on point duty, and waited to listen to a
five minutes’ curtain lecture. After threading through a
lot of thick traffic, a fuming German was deposited at
the door of his club twenty-five minutes late for his
appointment. Mr. Westhaus was gone. Perhaps it was
coincidence.
On the whole, that must have been a very trying trip
HERR STEINHAUER HAICKE MAR 1 NUS PETRUS JANSSEN
Dutch subject. Arrested at Southampton for espionage, Court-
martial Westminster Guildhall 16th July, 1915. Convicted. Shot
at Tower of London 30th July, 1915.
ESPIONAGE
12 I
to the visitor’s temper. Every time he tried to meet an
acquaintance, something went wrong. His letters were
delayed and misdelivered; telephones broke down at his
touch or else gave innumerable wrong numbers; public
clocks in buildings where their correctness was usually almost
sacred were either fast or slow. His own watch, which
disappeared on the first morning of his stay at the hotel,
was miraculously discovered behind a dressing-table on
the day he departed, and returned with profuse apologies.
The joy of the thing was that the man, who was no fool,
came in the end almost to suspect his own shadow; but he
could prove not a single thing, and with his doubtful
identity he was not really in a position to make much of a
fuss. I believe that Herr Steinhauer, whose private car
was waiting him at Hamburg when his ship arrived, went
back to the Fatherland feeling that he had wasted his time.
Since then he has been back here once more—in August
1922. He was Mr. Steiner that time, but as his power
for harming us was gone, we left the clocks alone, for
which, doubtless, he was thankful.
In mid-July 1914, when the war-clouds began to gather
in Europe, the detectives of the Special Department went,
as it were, to “ action stations.” I had had some experience
of spy detection already, and I was given a kind of roving
commission, with the East Coast as my special care. War
with Germany was, of course, still only a possibility, but
in police work arrangements have to be made beforehand
against eventualities, or else the whole energy is wasted.
I took up temporary quarters at Harwich; but before moving
there definitely, I spent a week “ cramming ” for my new
job in those rooms at Scotland Yard which are specially
prepared for such purposes.
The public has an idea of the grim, square building at
Westminster as being something between a police barrack
122 TRAITORS WITHIN
and a Government office. It is more than that. Let me
explain a few details about it, and tell of some of the rooms
where I spent my busy hours in those hot end-of-July
days. The photographic department was the first of them.
In it, indexed according to a complicated but perfectly clear
system of filing, are thousands and thousands of photo¬
graphs, each with a name and a few words written on the
back. They are pictures of criminals who are likely to
cause trouble a second time. My task then was to memorize
the faces of the men—and women—who were likely to
appear as German agents on our coasts.
Then I went to the library. Among its thousands of
books were volumes on all sorts of crimes, records of
famous criminals and great detectives, and fascinating
details of notable cases of the past. The library, which is
not confined to books in English or only concerning
English crime, very greatly assisted me, and suggested my
next two calls—to the laboratory and to the cypher
room.
In the laboratory, for the first time, I learned about
invisible inks. For it was of vital importance to us, in the
event of hostilities, not only to be able to read enemy
communications being sent out of England but also to
permit certain letters from abroad to reach their destinations
apparently untouched after we had satisfied ourselves of
their contents. Also, as I shall tell later, there were times
when we found it necessary to indite letters or portions of
letters ourselves, all in the good cause.
I spent part of one day and the whole of another at the
task of studying cryptograms. Cyphers have always
interested me, and, as I have explained, I had already met
them in my own police work over the Grosse case, but
never till the days when the streets outside that room
were echoing with newsboys’ shouts about European
ESPIONAGE
123
War threats did I realize what a novice I was at the
game.
At the end of the time, my head was buzzing and my
notebook bulging, but I had accumulated some useful
knowledge, which served me well later on. I had also a
clear idea that, if I needed it, I could get professional
assistance by sending in any particularly difficult cyphered
message to the Yard, where it would be unravelled, if human
ingenuity could accomplish the job.
Finally I collected all the information available about
the German spy school at Rotterdam. Mr. Peterssen, my
old opponent, had been replaced in 1912 by a gentleman
of the name of Flores, and this man had gathered round
him three of the world’s cleverest forgers. The obvious
inference was that they were needed to produce faked
passports, and a general notice had already been circulated
to examine all passports with minute care. I made further
notes concerning the paper on which passports from various
countries are printed, special details about them and the
probable weak points in faked photographs and hand¬
writing.
I also collected a number of maps of the East Coast
and one or two charts showing in detail the deeps and
shallows of the North Sea. Numbers of names of Germans,
suspected or otherwise, living in East Coast towns and
villages, were supplied to me, and I was told what arrange¬
ments to make immediately news came through of the
actual outbreak of war—if such a thing ever happened.
It was still the general opinion at Scotland Yard, even up
to about July end, that peace would be saved at the last
moment; but no detail of preparation was omitted by us
on that account. When I finally boarded my train for
Harwich, I felt that, internally at any rate, England was
ready to defend herself against any attempted espionage or
TRAITORS WITHIN
124
aggression; and on the journey I went over in my mind
the final details of the closing of the port of Harwich,
whence it was expected that a great many not too innocent
Germans would attempt to return to the Fatherland within
the next few days.
CHAPTER V
The Spy round-up of 1914—The Censor; how it worked and grew—
My work in East Anglia—The man who flew carrier pigeons—
The Censor hands me my first spy news—My first brush with
the enemy.
W AR! The word echoed like a thunderclap
across the breadth of England. Trains
packed with moustached Regulars and goods
trucks crammed with pointed shells nose-up like eggs in a
basket, rumbled southward night and day; excited crowds
gathered in our big towns and cheered news and rumour
alike; and aliens with blonde hair and guttural accents
poured towards our ports like water to a sluice, but only to
discover that sleepy England had awakened.
At Harwich 138 Germans were detained and interned,
most of them claiming to be innocent aliens but due for
internment for all that in time of war. Three of them,
at any rate, were definitely suspect from their previous
activities. Meanwhile, six known spies were arrested in
London, three in Newcastle, one each in Brighton, Win¬
chester, Barrow, Southampton and Falmouth, two in
Portsmouth, and five in other parts of the country. These
men, it must be understood, had done nothing actually to
harm us up to August 4th, but all had corresponded more
or less regularly with Dierks & Co., and though that was
all very well for peace time, so long as no leakage of informa¬
tion occurred, yet we could not risk it in time of war. Also,
several of them had acted as correspondents to German
newspapers, sending articles about naval and military
125
126 TRAITORS WITHIN
matters here, and these again could not be permitted too
much liberty when their inquisitiveness might prove
dangerous. Personally, I collected my quota of aliens from
Harwich, Felixstowe and Dovercourt, and left only three
known Germans at liberty in my district. One of these was
a man of eighty, another a cripple of fifty-three who had
been naturalized thirty years; and the last another elderly
man whose son was serving with one of our shire regiments.
In those days of alarm and uncertainty, one man at least
got himself into trouble through too much zeal. Late one
evening, I was telephoned for to go to a hotel in Harwich
where, so said the excited clerk, they had caught a spy.
When I arrived the place was seething. A voluble little
man was sitting in the manager’s room with a couple of
burly porters keeping guard. He had, it seemed, heard a
well-known local journalist telephoning to London from
the hotel lobby, and had promptly ordered the boots to
arrest the journalist, who, he said, was the Baron von
Greuning. When cross-questioned himself, he refused to
speak, except to say that he lived in Glasgow. He would
tell me nothing about himself, and finally I was bound to
arrest him. In the court the affair had an amusing sequel.
He had been to Holland on behalf of his employers and
had just returned; the firm had told him not to answer
questions because his visit had concerned a certain trade
rivalry, so he had obeyed them to the letter when he was
arrested! He was a Glasgow man and, except for asking
him to give up to the court a revolver he usually carried,
he got off with a warning not to refuse to answer police
questions in future, and not to jump to conclusions.
Meanwhile I was working in close collaboration with the
Censoring Department of the Post Office. I was asked
now and again to submit suspicious letters to chemical tests
for secret inks; and on three occasions I had to call on
ESPIONAGE 127
indiscreet civilians on the East Coast and tell them that
they must be very careful what they wrote to foreign
correspondents concerning the movements of our troops
and the despatch of munitions to France. It will be remem¬
bered that when the Germans first met our troops at
Mons, they believed them to be French units, having
definitely understood that the British Expeditionary Force
had not then even crossed the Channel. That rumour was
permitted to go through to Holland on a number of letters
—about a dozen in all—while a number of better-informed
letters, from people innocently unaware that they should
not convey such news, were returned with an explanation
to their senders.
On August 3rd, 1914, one man was made Postal Censor,
in view of possible coming hostilities. There were 170 men
and women in his department by the end of 1914, and just
under 5,000 by the end of the War. Women were found
to be definitely better than men for the work. They have
a more accurate memory for details of handwriting, and
are more methodical and painstaking. The packing of all
parcels was prodded with needles and tested by touch,
and opened and examined in cases where any suspicion
was entertained. One of the cleverest messages of the
whole War was written in invisible ink on the inside of
some old brown paper addressed to Copenhagen, round a
parcel containing two new novels. More than 130 lan¬
guages and dialects were spoken and read by Censor officials
and over two hundred cyphers were known to them.
Each official read an average of 120 letters a day, the
total weight of correspondence dealt with each day being
something like four tons, including an average of well over
2,000 parcels. Nor was the search entirely profitless, even
in £ s. d. Nearly £200,000 worth of contraband material
was confiscated from neutral letters for Germany; over
128 TRAITORS WITHIN
£8,000,000 worth of suspected share scrip was com¬
mandeered by the Government and held till the end of the
War, and £2,000,000 worth definitely confiscated. Several
tons weight of pro-German propaganda, some of it venom¬
ously bitter and most of it meant for India and the East,
was removed and destroyed. Incidentally, although it
does not come under censor work strictly, the police seized
over £30,000,000 worth of German ships and cargoes as
prizes.
In the first few days after the outbreak of war, I was
recalled urgently to London to deal with trouble-makers
there. A person calling herself an American woman
journalist, and a pseudo Baron who was certainly the son
of a provincial Prussian draper, had blustered into a London
Government office to get permission to run a Society for
Distressed Germans in England. Instead it was thought
wise to add them to the distressed Germans. In 1912,
they were strongly suspected of having fermented a London
dock strike with foreign money; later they were said to have
landed arms in Ulster, after which the lady went to a castle
in South Ireland, where she posed as an Irish-born Countess,
with the German as her secretary. She had at that time
presented a Mauser rifle to the Volunteers of Ballysimon
at a special review. Two months before the War, the sham
Baron had got a quotation from London for quantities of
rifles, ammunition and bayonets, and had boasted to the
gunmaker that they would be wanted for an Irish revolution.
The lady, meanwhile, had opened a picture palace at
Croydon, which was a meeting place of discontented aliens
in England. The upshot was that both she and the German
were interned. In the prison camp, she had cases of
champagne sent to the Commander, in order to be able
to accuse him of corruption, but he returned the cases.
Our bold, bad baron broke down rather badly under
ESPIONAGE 129
cross-examination. He stated that he was a German by
birth, but had been naturalized as an American when a
mere child, and had been at school in Detroit. I asked
him such questions as what school he attended, where he
lived, who was his schoolmaster, how far his home was from
the school, and various details about his life after leaving
school. On checking up his answers, I found that he had
named two non-existent streets, that the school he mentioned
had been built in 1908, when he himself was forty-two,
and that the schoolmaster whose name he had given was
fifteen years younger than my prisoner himself—was, in
fact, appointed as master of that school in 1913.
Two days after my return to Harwich, I found cause for
suspicion at Dovercourt. That was the third week in
August; as I was returning from the Post Office, where
I had been examining some letters, I saw a pigeon, flying
very high, winging its way over my head, and straight out
to sea. I ran back to the Post Office at the top of my
speed, and telephoned to an officer in charge of certain fast
coastal boats to try to shoot the bird as it left the coast.
But it must have got away ahead of us, for he never even
caught sight of it.
I went through the port with a small-tooth comb after
that, and it was during the next afternoon that I saw another
pigeon fly up from a roof I happened to be watching—for
I had my suspicions—and head towards Germany. That
time we did not miss it; but although the bird was a carrier
right enough, it bore no message. At the same time, its
departure synchronized with the exit of a destroyer flotilla
from the port; the previous day a cruiser had steamed off
to sea three or four minutes before the other bird left.
I went straight along to the building whence the bird
had flown, and arrested the proprietor. The old man
protested volubly that he did not breed carrier pigeons,
130 TRAITORS WITHIN
and knew nothing about them, except that they insisted
on coming and sitting on the roof of his public house!
When he dramatically repeated this at his trial, a helpless
titter went round the court, and even the authorities smiled.
The prisoner, however, who was a German by birth, was
told to go away and live inland, where he would not be so
easily suspected, and seemed glad enough to get off so
lightly. He made over the public house to his son and
daughter, and himself retired from business.
Whether he was really as innocent as he pretended, I
cannot say even now. No one else in the town bred pigeons
as far as we could trace, but on the other hand we could
find no actual proof that they belonged to him, except that
they used to sit about on his roof. In any case, we had no
further trouble of the kind during the War; carriers,
indeed, were hardly used at all in England for spy purposes.
At this time a definite leakage of information was
occurring on the East Coast, chiefly to do with the move¬
ments of our war vessels. The first serious intimation of
it was that on the morning of December 16th a number of
German warships appeared off Hartlepool, Scarborough
and Whitby and began a fierce bombardment. The shells
killed a hundred and forty people, and wounded as many
more, very largely women and children. The German
ships stayed over half an hour, and then departed, exactly
in time to miss the detachments of our own Fleet which
had been wirelessed to return to deal with them. That
raid could not have happened without the Germans actually
knowing when our vessels would be absent from the East
Coast (very seldom indeed was it that we left that coast
so undefended), and also knowing by which route the
defenders would return, for no clash took place and the
raiders got home again without suffering for their temerity.
Month after month of search and examination showed
ESPIONAGE
1 3 I
no results. But at least we made such a barrier that no
more news of any dangerous sort could filter through; and
through that waiting time we knew quite well that the next
attempt to send Fleet information abroad would probably
result in work on Tower Green. Still, we could obtain no
useful clues, though we followed a good many intricate ones
which ended in nothing. Finally, having tired of useless
watching and waiting on the East Coast, I decided to go
down to London and have a talk with the Censor officials
with whom I was working.
It was a fortunate visit. Going through reams of copied
correspondence and records of cables, I came on details
of orders for cigars sent from various of our seaport towns.
They were being sent, evidently, by two men, to an address
in Holland, and judging by the orders contained in the
cables those men were supplying hundreds of thousands
of cigars to our tobacconists. That was a time when a
good cigar cost money; and it struck me as strange that
such a roaring trade should be going on. Personally, I had
not noticed many Corona-Coronas being smoked.
Telephone wires began to hum, and after half a day of
enquiries, I felt reasonably sure that I was on the trail of
one of these singularly successful cigar travellers. A man
answering his description was due to arrive at an Aldgate
hotel that evening. There were certain letters used after
each order for cigars that was sent to Holland, and in my
mind those letters had a sinister significance. I wanted to
ask my gentlemen a few questions about them, and also to
sample some of the fine cigars which they so frequently
ordered. I went along to Aldgate.
CHAPTER VI
Wiping out the score for Whitby and Scarborough—Janssen and
Roos go to the Tower—Harwich signals the submarines.
I T was a chill spring evening when I stepped into the
lounge of the Three Nuns Inn at Aldgate. Sitting
at a table, sipping a whisky and talking animatedly to
two merchant captains, was a fair-haired, broad-shouldered
man who answered very accurately to the description I had
of the cigar traveller. I sat down at a nearby table, and
fragments of his conversation came to me. He was
talking about the German submarines, and trying to find
out indirectly when the two skippers were going to sail,
and from what ports. The men were both tight-lipped
R.N.R. officers, and merely gave him monosyllables, without
letting out any clues whatever.
Finally, the fair-haired man got up, yawned, and came
jauntily past my table, making for the door. He was
humming a music-hall air, and looked singularly unlike a
man over whom the shadow of the Dark Angel was already
falling. “ Mr. Willem Johannes Roos, I believe ? ” I said
quietly, as he drew level with me. “ I want a word with
you, Mr. Roos. May I come up to your room ? ”
He looked at me with narrowing eyes, but with no sign
of fear. Through the smoke I saw one of the R.N.R. men
half rise from his table and stare at us. Roos gave a fleeting
glance at the door, decided that escape was impossible, and
nodded airily. “ Come along up,” he said, smiling. I
followed him upstairs.
132
ESPIONAGE
133
“ You travel in cigars, I believe,” I said when we had
sat down in his room. “ Have you any samples here ? I
must warn you that you are under arrest, and that anything
you say may be used in evidence against you.”
The man bluffed magnificently. “Under arrest!” he
laughed. “ I suppose you’re a detective ? You’ve made
a silly mistake. I’ve no samples here; as a matter of fact,
I’ve run out of stock at the moment.”
“ You were in Hull two days ago,” I said, " and you
sent an order for 20,000 Coronas. Your order bore the
letters ‘ a.g.k.’ Which shops in Hull did you call on ?
What firm in Holland do you represent ? And what do
those three letters mean ? Answer those questions in
order, please.”
For several seconds he sat silent eyeing me. Then he
said abruptly: “ I shall not answer those questions. You
have no right to ask me private code-signs of my
firm.”
“ Your orders went to Dierks & Co., Rotterdam,” I
said. “ Do they deal in cigars ? ”
“ They do! ” he snapped.
I got up and warned him that I must search the room.
I also mentioned that there was a Detective-Sergeant on
the landing outside, so that an attempt to escape would
be useless. He started some sort of angry protest; then sat
glowering at me. There were no cigars anywhere in the
room and no evidence that there had ever been any. There
were no orders from cigar firms, nor books in which such
orders might be kept. But there was an illustrated magazine
which had lists of ships pencilled in the margins, each list
with the name of a Naval port beside it. The most recent
entry was as follows:
“ Hull, a.g.k. (and there followed a list of the names
of twenty cruisers) coronas.”
TRAITORS WITHIN
134
My knowledge of German came to my aid. “ These
letters stand for alter grosse Kreuzer ? ” I asked sharply.
The words are German for “ old large cruisers.” Roos
looked at me in silence, but I heard his breath hiss gently
between clenched teeth, and knew I was right. I referred
to my notebook for a moment and found some more clues
to the puzzle from my stray shot. " These other letters,”
I said, “ u.s.b. I suppose then stands for Unter See Booten ?
And k.s. means Kriegschiffe, of course—battleships ? What
do Cabanas, Coronas and Rothschilds stand for ? It’s only
a matter of time to work it out now; why not own up ? ”
Roos sat obstinately silent. I had a final look round his
room and then asked him to come along with me. He
asked rather awkwardly if there was any need for him to
be handcuffed, and was very relieved when I offered to
take his parole instead. He seemed to me a man who
could, within his own limits, be trusted. Also, he was a
brave man. The two captains were still sitting in the
lounge when we passed through. “ There you are, you
suspicious old devil! ” whispered one to the other in that
foghorn sotto voce that sailors use. Roos cheerily called
good night to them as we passed out. At the station I
asked Roos one or two final questions, and he was a little
more communicative. He said that his firm, which he
now admitted was Dierks & Co., had two representatives
in England; himself north of London and another man,
whose name he refused to give, working in the south. He
admitted that he had often met his fellow-traveller, and said
that if we applied to Holland we should find all his facts
in order.
Meanwhile I went along to the Yard to find out whether
anything had come of certain instructions I had sent to a
number of South Coast postmasters. Yes; from Southamp¬
ton had come an urgent telephone message half an hour
WILLEM JOHANNES ROOS JOSEF MARKS
Dutch subject. Arrested at Three Nuns Hotel, Aldgate, London, German subject. Arrested at Gravesend for espionage. Sentenced
for espionage. Court-martial Westminster Guildhall 16th July, 1915 to five years penal servitude. Deported to Germany
1915. Convicted. Shot at Tower of London 30th July, 1915. 15th November, 1919.
Attempted suicide.
ESPIONAGE
*35
before, that a cable ordering from Dierks & Co., 3,000
cabanas a.g.k., 1,000 Rothschilds k. and 4,000 coronas
u.s.b. had been handed in for despatch that evening. The
message went on that the man who had handed in the
cable had been shadowed to his lodgings according to my
instructions, and that the cable had not been despatched.
It never was despatched as a matter of fact.
To test a theory I had, I rang up Southampton and
asked whether they could tell me if the report was correct
that three old cruisers had just arrived in port there, one
battleship had just left and four submarines were stationed
there. If I had guessed the meanings of the significant
letters rightly, the figures must obviously be worked out
on the basis of one equalling 1,000 in the message and
the rest was pure guesswork. It was nearly right, but not
quite. After asking in a furious voice where the news
came from, the officer reported (I having explained who
I was) that the three old cruisers were stationed there; the
battle-cruiser had just arrived and the four submarines had
gone out that afternoon. By deduction I arrived at the
fact that Cabanas meant “stationed here”; Rothschilds
“arrived here”; and Coronas “left here.” The name
of the port was, of course, on the cable; and with the code
letters I have already described, those innocent-looking
cigar orders gave exact details of the movements of our
war vessels. Perhaps that was how the Scarborough raid
had been managed without any interference 1
I went to Southampton post haste. Outside a flat-
fronted brick house just inland from the docks was loitering
a quiet man who nodded to me as I went by. That meant
that the man who had sent off the cable that afternoon was
still in the brick house. I knocked at the door, and a
scared landlady let me in. It was very late, but when
I was shown up to the lodger’s room, he was sitting reading
TRAITORS WITHIN
136
a cheap novel. “ Mr. Haicke Marinus Petrus Janssen,”
I said, and I gave him the usual warning.
This man blustered. He would have damages; he didn’t
intend to come with me; I could come in the morning if I
wanted to see him. “ Well,” I said, “ I must ask some
questions now. You work for Dierks & Co. of Rotterdam,
I believe, as one of their cigar travellers. Are there any
more representatives of your firm in England ? ”
“ I don’t see why I should answer your questions,” said
the man loudly. “ But as a matter of fact the firm has no
other representatives over here. I’m the only one in
England. Why ? ” I asked him if he had ever heard of a
man called Roos. “ No,” he said abruptly. “ I know
no one of that name. Dierks have no one of that name
working for them.”
I took him along with me. He was furious, but did
not actually resist. On the way to the station, he told me
that my charge was absurd. “ I am Dutch,” he said
obstinately. “ I have served in the Dutch Merchant Service,
and there I earned your Board of Trade medal for saving
seamen’s lives from a burning English ship. How can
I be a spy ? ” Actually, as I discovered later, his statement
about the medal was correct; he had saved several lives
and shown the greatest bravery and coolness, and disregard
of danger.
Roos and Janssen stood their trial at the Westminster
Guildhall in July 1915. Until they were faced with one
another in the court they stuck to their stories, the one that
he knew the other well and the other that he was the sole
representative of Dierks & Co. in England. We did not
let them know that we had known all about Dierks & Co.
for some considerable time, but we made enquiries in
Holland just to be quite sure that it had not changed into
an innocent tobacco firm after all. It had not. Janssen
ESPIONAGE
i37
had sent orders from Chatham, Portsmouth, Devonport
and Southampton corresponding with the arrival and
departure of our warships; Roos had cabled from Rosyth
and Hull to our knowledge. The same code was used by
both. Moreover, neither had ever received from Holland
or sold or offered in England one single cigar. No tobac¬
conists had been called on, and despite the 11 orders ” for
thousands of cigars from the various ports, none had ever
been despatched by Dierks & Co. Two interesting
exhibits I was able to produce at the trial. They were
bottles of scent, the bottles and contents being identical.
This scent, on analysis at the Yard, showed that it possessed
the properties of invisible ink, and it was also proved in the
case that neither man used scent on himself at any time.
They should have used it; on such trifles as that do men’s
lives hang.
At the court the two men were good-humoured and
philosophical. When the Court Martial ended, Roos
turned to Janssen and shrugged. Even when their pass¬
ports were produced and shown to be forged and on paper
not like that used in Dutch passports, they had not seemed
affected or afraid. That night, in his cell, Roos was
heard shouting unintelligible jargon and singing. Towards
morning a warder heard a crash and tinkle of glass and ran
to the cell. He was only just in time. Roos had broken
his window with his fist, and was engaged in trying to cut
his throat with a jagged bit of glass.
He acted insanely at intervals until he was taken to the
Tower for execution. The night before he was shot he
was singing German drinking songs until past midnight.
Early next morning Roos and Janssen were conveyed by a
detachment of Military Police to a quadrangle of the
Tower, and there strapped to chairs and faced by a firing
party of eight men from a famous Guards regiment. They
138 TRAITORS WITHIN
were asked if they had any final messages or wishes, and
Roos begged a cigarette, which he was given by the officer
in charge.
They bared their chests themselves, but asked not to be
blindfolded, and this wish was respected. The signal was
given, the volley (in which no man knew whether his rifle
contained a blank or a bullet) crashed out, a wisp of smoke
rose, and the two spies, not ungallant in their own way,
had paid the score for the East Coast naval raid of the
previous December.
At about this time I had an interesting case in Harwich.
A butcher’s shop there which faced directly out to sea was
notably careless with its lights at that time when lights at
night were forbidden to be shown in seaport towns. No
less than three times had the owner been warned, and said
jovially that it was due to the carelessness of his sons,
and that it should not happen again.
It did happen again. A Special Constable on duty
near the shop noticed, one misty evening, that the blind of
the front room facing the sea was being drawn up and
down in a suspicious manner. Unfortunately the man could
not read Morse, but there seems to be no doubt whatever
that he was watching the beginning of a Morse message
being flashed out seawards, perhaps to some waiting
submarine. Anyway, the man knew that it was his duty
to stop it, and went straight into the house. He began some
explanation of his visit, but before he could say half a dozen
words he was murderously attacked by the butcher, his
wife, his two grown-up sons and his daughter. He managed
to blow his whistle, and then one of the women hit him on
the head with a lamp-stand, and he fell to the floor.
When another Special arrived he was lying trying to
defend himself from kicks from the three men. There was
then a fairly mixed free fight in which the two Specials used
ESPIONAGE
139
their truncheons and fists, but were finally driven from
the building. One stayed nearby to prevent further
signalling while the other doubled back to report at the
police station. But when he arrived the shopkeeper was
there before him, in the midst of a confused story about a
brutal assault which he said had been made on himself and
his family because they refused to answer bullying questions
from the two Specials.
In view of the many warnings, however, that story did
not hold water; and besides the Specials were both quiet
elderly men of known integrity who had never been known
to fight anyone in their lives. Moreover, they would have
been mad to take on the hefty family which had so savagely
beaten them. An imprisonment sentence was passed on
the shopkeeper, and his family were seriously warned not
to risk any further signals seaward.
CHAPTER VII
The Philatelist who wasn’t—The man who played his own funeral
march—The fraulein who loved him.
D URING 19x5 I came up against a number of
instances which clearly showed the one glaring
fault in the otherwise brilliantly organized espion¬
age system of Germany. It was lack of precision in detail.
The bogus cigar travellers I arrested had no cigars with
them, and carried scent-bottles though they never used
scent. Similarly, time after time, spies betrayed themselves
by missing a very obvious tiny thing when they had gone
to immense trouble to master every variety of more im¬
portant point.
One of the difficulties which constantly presented itself
to me at this time was the vast accumulation of really
specialized knowledge necessary to my job. As this chapter
will show, I had, among other things, to know more about
stamp collecting than does the average philatelist, though
that was but one of my necessary branches of study. It
happened one day that I received instructions that among
the fairly considerable correspondence marked “ Doubtful ”
and put aside for further examination by the Censor, were
two or three letters addressed to a private individual at
The Hague. These, when I first came to examine them,
seemed to be quite in order. They were letters from a keen
stamp-collector to a friend who exchanged duplicates with
him through the post; the actual news in them was very
brief, and merely stated that the writer was well, was
140
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141
travelling round England on business, and hoped soon to
be back in Holland again. But each letter contained long
lists of stamps wanted and offered; and it immediately
occurred to me that there was a stark absence of mention
of foreign stamps between about 30 cents and one dollar,
or equivalent values—in fact, no figures occurred in any
letter above about 25, and nearly all the figures were low
digits. Suspicion breeds suspicion; and the next thing
I saw was that the writer seemed to want a lot of imperforate
and unwatermarked stamps. I went out to a bookshop and
invested in two or three stamp-collectors’ handbooks;
and sat down for a spell of hard mental work. Before I
had checked many of the stamps mentioned in the letter
before me, I came to one that didn’t exist. It was a
20-centimes, France, perfect specimen, unwatermarked,
and imperforate. I could see listed several French 20-
centimes stamps, but none both unwatermarked and
imperforate; and it struck me as strange that the date or
identifying details should not be given, since on the facts
stated it might (except for the absence of watermark)
have been one of three known specimens.
The letter, which was dated a couple of days earlier,
said that the writer was going on to Gravesend, and would
communicate again from there. I went to Gravesend,
found out from the local police what strangers had come to
the town recently, and after a long search discovered the
man who had signed the letters—a middle-aged, spectacled
fellow called Joseph Marks. I asked him if he had any
objection to my examining his room, and he said that he
was quite agreeable, and that he would give me any assist¬
ance possible. Meanwhile, he answered my questions
candidly. He was a retired merchant, born in Holland
of a South American mother and a Dutch father. He was
at present trying to see England as a tourist.
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142
“ Those are my stamps,” he laughed, as I asked per¬
mission to open a brown Gladstone bag on the floor.
“ There’s nothing in there but an album and some mounts
and things. Really, Inspector, I think it’s hardly worth
opening, but you can if you wish.”
I opened it, while his voice droned on about exchanging
with a friend in Holland, and being himself a keen collector.
The bag contained a tin of stamp-mounts, some tweezers,
a magnifying glass and a stamp album with two or three
hundred varieties mounted in it. “ Do you often put
stamps in here ? ” I asked. “ I suppose you’re always
adding to it ? ”
“ Always,” he replied pleasantly. “ I exchange a great
deal, and add something every day or two.”
I said nothing; but the mounts in the tin were all stuck
together, and had obviously not been touched for months.
I noticed a pocket at the end of the book, just inside the
cover, and drew out a sheet of stout paper. This is what
was written on it:
Wanted—certain. Offered—uncertain.
Unused—arrived.
Used—gone.
Imperf.—undefended.
Perf.—defended.
Unwater.—no aeroplanes.
Water.—aeroplanes.
Good cond.—big.
Med. cond.—medium.
Any cond.—small.
Surcharged—submarines.
I went over and locked the door, putting the key in my
pocket. “ You are under arrest, Mr. Marks,” I said.
Then I took out from my notebook the copy I had made of
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i43
the letter. It was headed “ Dover,” and decoded by means
of this key, it read: “Certain: 3 (cent U.S.) gone, big;
defended; no aeroplanes; 5 (p. Spain) arrived small;
1 (d. English) submarine arrived. Uncertain; 20 (centimes,
France) very big, no aeroplanes, undefended. Folkestone,
I believe—and the letter then went on normally. By
omitting the parts I have put in brackets, an interesting
account was given of the defences of Dover and Folkestone,
and also of the movements of our warships in the vicinity
of those towns.
By means of the key we decoded further letters from
Mr. Marks, which had been held up as being of a suspicious
nature, and found that each list of stamps “ wanted ” or
“ offered ” corresponded with movements of Naval vessels
on the South Coast. Under examination Marks (who was
rather a nervous type of man) broke down and confessed
that he was really a spy, and also gave us certain useful
information about his Dutch correspondent. By so doing
he saved his life; and was given five years penal servitude
for his espionage.
He was put in a cell next to another spy, with a some¬
what more picturesque history. A German of the name of
Buschmann, posing as a Dutch violinist, had been travelling
round our Naval bases, as he himself said, seeking work.
Yet he showed no lack of money, and made no apparent
effort to get a job. On the other hand, he questioned
anyone he thought unsuspicious, and did all he could
to get information of the movements of our vessels, the
departure of troopships, and the manufacture of munitions.
His correspondence was watched; and one day when an
innocent letter of his was being tested, rusty red letters
began to form themselves between the lines. They joined
and increased, and finally formed German words dealing
with various matters on which it was not then politic to
TRAITORS WITHIN
144
send news abroad. Buschmann was arrested, his passport
was discovered to be in the handwriting of Herr Flores of
the German Secret Service, and he was tried and con¬
demned to death.
When Joseph Marks was put in the cell next his, it was
Buschmann’s last night alive. During the night, the
two men kept up a conversation between their cells, and
Buschmann talked rather sadly about a love affair he had
had in Prussia four years before. Marks said very little,
and Buschmann evidently got the idea that he was depressed.
“ I’ll play to you,” he shouted. “ The English are very
kind. They won’t mind.” And he picked up his violin,
which, by his special request, had been put in his cell with
him, and played throughout the rest of the night old
German love songs, dance tunes, and some of the music
from Handel’s oratorios. Next morning, he was shot;
his courage stayed with him to the last, and he refused to
have his eyes bandaged before the volley.
In November 1919, when Marks had finished his
sentence, he was deported. On leaving prison, he was met
by a woman of about thirty, tall, slender and beautiful.
She was the girl whom Buschmann had loved in Prussia,
and she had come to hear her friend’s last messages, which
he had given Marks on the night before his death. Since
then, she and Marks had corresponded. When I went
with him from Charing Cross Station to see him out of
England, that lady came to say good-bye to him, and she
was crying bitterly at the breaking of this last link with her
former lover. Marks went aboard the Weimar at Dundee
in mid-November of that year, and that was the last England
saw of him.
CHAPTER VIII
Hahn and Muller are gathered in—I am promised the Iron Cross ; a
bitter failure—The plans I sold to Germany—Mr. Roggen is
interested in torpedoes.
tJL MONG my batch of letters for examination I found
one, during the summer of 1915, that puzzled
jL A me. It was a nice, kind, sensible family letter,
written in an educated hand and phrased with that mixture
of care and ease which marks the intelligent man. And yet
—and the more I looked at it, the more I wondered—
across the bottom of the sheet beneath the signature was a
double row of crosses which could only be supposed to
represent kisses. In the abstract, I have no objection to
kisses; but one does not expect to find them so lavishly
displayed on a letter written by a mature and educated
correspondent.
A hot iron passed rapidly over the sheet left it as innocent
as before. We got to work with our testing chemicals.
It was a delicate job to apply them without causing them
to smudge the words written in genuine ink, but after some
artistic brush-work, the almost-expected rusty letters began
to show, and then to creep together into words. The
innocence passed away with a rush! There were figures
about troops, about troop-ship sailings, and a sentence
which paid a grudging but emphatic tribute to the way in
which British military and civil morale was weathering under
the stress of war. The letter was signed with the initial
“ G.,” but bore no address of departure. It was, however,
postmarked in a London East End district.
k 145
TRAITORS WITHIN
146
We enquired at the Dutch shop to which the letter
was addressed, but could only learn that it was an accom¬
modation address, and that the man who collected the
letters in question seemed an ordinary business man.
Meanwhile, another letter had been stopped by the Censor,
again signed “ G.,” and again bearing rather too many
kisses; and it contained a fierce demand for more money
written between the lines in invisible ink. The kisses, by
the way, seemed to be nothing to do with the secret infor¬
mation, which was all conveyed in invisible writing; they
were added merely to give a homely touch to the letter!
A third letter from the Censor gave me the long-sought
clue. It was unsigned, and in a different handwriting; but
in those accusing red letters it said—“ G. gone to New¬
castle, so am writing from 201 instead.”
After telephoning some instructions to Newcastle, I
picked up a London Post Office Directory. It was a chance,
of course; but it occurred to me that 201 was possibly a
house number in a street. And not many streets in the
East End could be so long that there were 201 houses in
them! I marked on a piece of paper the names of all those
which filled the specification, and then went along in a fast
car to try some of them. At each one I made certain
enquiries, and in one or two cases I had a look at lodgers’
rooms. The sixth house I tried was the right one. It
belonged to a baker named Hahn, and he was full of bluster
when I said I must search the rooms above the shop.
That, however, was soon settled. Leaving him in
charge of a Detective-Sergeant, I went up and had a look
at his bedroom. The first thing I saw was a cheap writing-
pad on a small table. I tore off a sheet and held it up to
the light. The watermark, as I expected, was the same
as that on the censored letters in my possession. Beside it
lay a half-used packet of envelopes exactly similar to those
ALFREDO AUGUSTO ROGGEN LIZZIE EMILE WERTHEIM
German Uruguayan. Arrested at Loch Lomond, Scotland, for German subject. Arrested at Regent’s Park Road, London, for
espionage. Court-martial Westminster Guildhall 20th August, 1915. espionage. Sentenced at Old Bailey, 29th September, 1915, to ten
Convicted. Shot at Tower of London 17th September, 1915. years penal servitude. Died insane, Aylesbury Prison, August 1920.
ESPIONAGE
H7
used in the letters to Holland, and beneath them was a
sheet of blotting paper. I took it over to the glass in the
corner of the room. In the glass I could read on the image
of the pink paper several words, including “ —ne to
—ewcastle so-ting from 201 —In a medicine
chest on the wall was a steel pen with its nib uninked but
corroded as if by an alkali. On the bed was a sock, not
worn, but with its top faintly faded. I tested it with a drop
of litmus from a bottle in my pocket, and the reaction showed
an alkaline solution impregnated in the top of the sock.
That solution, as was afterwards proved, was a secret ink;
when it was needed, the sock was soaked in water, and the
water (having thus been vitalized with the alkali) was then
able to be used for writing the invisible words between the
lines of the letters for Holland. I also found the fellow
to the sock I had discovered, and three ties similarly treated.
Now, of course, we had ample evidence to convict
Mr. Hahn; but we were still not much nearer to the identity
of the mysterious “ G.” Our prisoner himself was obstin¬
ately silent, and sullenly denied ownership of the materials
I had found in his room. As to correspondence with
Holland or the personality of “ G.,” he repeated that he
knew nothing. His neighbours, however, had less reluct¬
ance in helping us. Several of them described in detail a
tall, dark, gentlemanly Russian who lived, they believed,
somewhere near Russell Square, and who visited Hahn
fairly frequently. Away I went in my car to Russell Square.
It was a tedious job; but, there being no alternative,
I searched every boarding-house and hotel register in
Russell Square for the name of a guest who had recently
gone to Newcastle on business. As I had my man’s
description, I narrowed down my choice to one of two
possible names, and drove off through the pitch-black night
to Newcastle at a pace which equalled that of a fast train.
TRAITORS WITHIN
148
And there, in a house by the waterside, I came on my
“ Russian.” He denied everything with a shade too much
readiness; he even denied all knowledge of Hahn!
Various neighbours of the baker identified this latest
capture as Hahn’s visitor when, in the fullness of time,
we prepared our case against him. As, one by one, the
accusing facts piled up, the man lost his nerve. Finally,
he sent for me and in a broken voice admitted that he was
a spy, and that his real name was Muller. He had been
the moving spirit of the two, and sentence of death was
passed on him, while Hahn, a more or less passive accom¬
plice, got five years penal servitude. Muller recovered his
nerve after boldly declaring his profession, and was said
to have shaken hands all round with the execution party
before the fatal volley was fired.
No suspicion had meanwhile been aroused in Holland,
and it occurred to me that a little confusion might be caused
by carrying on a correspondence in the name of the ex-spies,
letting the enemy know just those things which it was
expedient he should know because they were so very mis¬
leading! I went with my plan to certain military authorities,
and received their blessing upon it, with some suggestions
as to tit-bits of faked news which, though they were offered
without a smile, convulsed me. There were also proposals
of a more serious nature.
Acting in concert with the military advisers, I sent
certain letters in a workmanlike imitation of the hand¬
writing of the spies, and I inserted the usual desperate pleas
for payment for such invaluable secrets. Money was
actually sent in return, much to our joy, and it was thought
fit to absorb it into the supplies which paid for our anti¬
espionage work at the time.
At about this time we had news of a somewhat suspicious
individual who was wandering about in the neighbourhood
ESPIONAGE
149
of Loch Lomond. A day or two before leaving for the
North he had called on a famous Midland firm of machinery
makers and asked various details and prices concerning
some agricultural machinery which he said he wanted to
import to South America. He explained that he was a
Uruguayan farmer owning vast tracts of undeveloped land
which he wanted to improve and cultivate on modern
lines. By a lucky coincidence, the firm’s South American
traveller happened at the moment to be over here on a
visit; and it was considered a good business move to intro¬
duce him to the prospective customer. The traveller asked
a few questions about the Uruguayan farm and the sort
of machinery required there—and discovered that his
vis-a-vis knew nothing whatever of the place supposed to
be his home, and spoke of places hundreds of miles apart
as if they were within a day’s ride on horseback. He
did not even know the name of his country’s chief port!
Without alarming the man in any way the firm com¬
municated with the police, and a detective was told off to
watch Mr. Roggen and discover whether his movements
were at all suspicious. As he immediately afterwards
went to Luss on Loch Lomond, the detective communi¬
cated with the Yard; for at that time secret tests were being
made on the Loch with a new British torpedo. While
being shadowed, he spent two days on the moors above the
Loch, hiding in the heather and watching the tests through
powerful field-glasses. Then he posted a letter to a Nor¬
wegian address, saying that he was shortly leaving this
country and returning to Uruguay, and that he had made
a good deal in horses in Scotland. He had made no deal
in horses; and between the lines of his letter was certain
information which should not have been there. I arrested
him and took him down to London. When I went into
the room of the inn in which he was staying, he whipped
TRAITORS WITHIN
150
out a gun and tried to put it to his head, but I caught his
wrist before he could do so.
He was tried at the Westminster Guildhall in August
1915. He was jaunty and defiant; flatly denied everything
that we said about him, and finally, when proof after proof
of his guilt was exposed, said that his citizenship of Uruguay
protected him from suffering anything more than a slight
imprisonment. He was sentenced to be shot as a spy.
When sentence was pronounced, he stared incredulously
around him, and then broke into threats and entreaties.
He swore that he was really a Uruguayan, and that his
“ murder ” as he called it would bring Uruguay into the
War on the side of Germany. He hinted that he was related
to powerful persons in that country, and shouted that they
would avenge his death on his judges. A few days later,
his threats were dispersed for ever in a few wisps of pale
smoke at the Tower.
CHAPTER IX
I meet some Women Spies—The lady who went to Scotland by car—
Mrs. Doctor Smith and her fishpond—I cross another trail.
J UDGING from those women spies of Germany
with whom I came into contact, and from those whose
stories I heard from the detectives who had arrested
them, I did not form a very high opinion of women as
spies. A man can pretend to belong to various suitable
professions to account for the fact of his moving about the
country and making suspicious enquiries; a woman has no
such easily-fitting cloak. Prostitutes are sometimes (very
rarely) employed for espionage; quantities of information
are offered by them in war-time—at a price—but such
information is very seldom bought, for it cannot be counted
as reliable.
In the autumn of 1915 I received news that a lady
visitor at Rosyth was possessed of a powerful car, and could
handle it exceedingly well. That in itself was unusual
though not suspicious; but when it was added to the facts
that she seemed anxious to scrape up an acquaintance with
young Naval officers and that periodically she scorched
down to London in her car and was back in Rosyth after
three days spent almost entirely on the road, everything
did not look quite so innocent as we would have liked.
I went up to Rosyth.
On the day I arrived a young officer reported with some
slight embarrassment that a Dutch lady had made his
acquaintance the previous afternoon, asking him to help
'S l
TRAITORS WITHIN
J 5 *
her with her car (which had broken down), and using the
opportunity to ask him a great many questions about his
ship, British naval movements and details of the boom
across the harbour mouth. He had given no information,
but thought it wiser to report the incident. The description
of the lady was that of Lizzie Wertheim, the owner of the
big car; and two days earlier the local police reported that
they had received a similar statement from a destroyer
lieutenant.
My own observations soon proved that this charming
young woman was ready to go to considerable lengths to
get the news she wanted of our Fleet movements. Fashion¬
ably dressed, tall, slender and handsome, she lodged at a
local hotel, was friendly with everybody, tipped hand¬
somely and especially tried to get acquainted with Naval
officers. She was, according to her own report, a Dutch
lady of private means, over here on holiday and anxious
to see something of England in war-time. Occasionally,
she said quite openly, she had to run down to London to
see her solicitor about her financial allowance, which she
could only draw in person.
One morning the big car glided out of its garage, and
set off southwards. I followed, at a discreet distance, in a
racing car, and sent ahead of me by telephone a description
of the powerful vehicle I was chasing. Roads in those
days were bumpy, narrow, ill-posted and inches deep in
white dust. I reckoned myself a good driver, but my race
to London that day was a thrilling bit of motoring, and it
was absolutely all I could do to make the pace. However
my luck held and in the autumn evening I raced into
London, still faithfully following my leader.
She put up her car at a garage in Bloomsbury, and went
straight along to a Bedford Square hotel. I followed, and
found her in due course dining with a fair-haired, weak-
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*53
mouthed man of about thirty-five, and talking earnestly
to him. I engaged a table near them; unfortunately not
near enough to be able to overhear their conversation.
But I fixed the man’s appearance in my mind, and, by
sending out a note to a detective-sergeant in the lounge,
found that the man’s name was signed in the hotel books
as R. Rowland, American citizen, and that he had been
staying there about a month. I also gave instructions that
his correspondence was to be specially examined and
submitted to me.
After an expensive dinner, during which the two argued
some question excitedly, they got up and went out to a
theatre. Lizzie Wertheim stayed that night in London—
apparently their argument had been whether she should
return to Scotland at once or stay for a time in the south
—and next morning they were riding a couple of very smart
hired horses in the Row. The lady, who rode as well as
she drove, was in the gayest spirits, and laughed and joked
the whole time, but Mr. Rowland looked worried and
unhappy. Neither of them guessed that the man on the
quiet grey who passed and repassed them was a detective
officer—was, in fact, myself.
On the following morning Mrs. Wertheim got into her
long superb car and went north again, myself still on her
trail, though this time a little further behind, so as not to
arouse suspicion. I arrived in Rosyth an hour after her
car had been put away. That evening from some source
unknown to us, she got information that the battleship
Tiger was due to leave Scapa Flow. And from the first
collection next morning the Censor collected a letter in her
handwriting, saying that the writer had had a safe journey
up to Scotland, was getting tired of Rosyth, and would
soon be moving northwards. It was tested for invisible
writing. Between the lines appeared the information we
iS 4 TRAITORS WITHIN
had expected—which should certainly not have been
there.
Immediately I telephoned to London not to let Rowland
(to whom the letter was addressed) out of sight; and I went
to the Rosyth hotel to arrest Mrs. Wertheim. She had
paid her bill and gone that morning back to London.
Probably the receipt of some fresh and important news
had made her change her plans; anyway, I went to London
after her as fast as I could drive. I had made arrangements
for the movements of her big car to be noted, and as I sped
south I checked that it had passed all the way before me.
I found it eventually at the same garage in London as
before.
As we wanted to get more information against Rowland,
we left Mrs. Wertheim free for one more night. She dined
with Rowland as before, and we watched his movements
and correspondence for anything that might be suspicious.
Next morning, when Mrs. Wertheim was walking in
Regent’s Park Road with three lady friends, I warned her
that she was under arrest, and must come at once to the
Yard to answer questions concerning her actions. Her
bravado was magnificent. She stared haughtily at me,
said that she was busy, but was willing to oblige us by
coming later, and that under no circumstances would she
accompany me there and then. As I did not want the task
of chasing her car all over England, I was obliged to call
assistance, and take her away in a taxi at once.
She consistently denied everything, but facts were against
her. She was shown her own letter with the forbidden
news, and merely said we had forged it! She was told
just how her movements had been traced, and merely made
acid remarks about what she chose to call our “ comedy
of errors.” The smart feather in her hat was found to be
impregnated with concentrated invisible ink. Evidence
ESPIONAGE
*55
was brought that she had tried to obtain information from
officers at Rosyth. She was committed for trial.
How I dealt with Rowland, it will be simpler to tell in
my next chapter. Here I propose to recount my adventures
with other women spies, and the various ways in which
German women attempted to serve their country by spying.
Mrs. Doctor Smith was an interesting example of a
woman spy with ideals. A German, married before the War
to an English doctor, when the War broke out she was the
mother of a boy of seven, and seemed thoroughly domesti¬
cated and happy. But always she had cherished a burning
patriotism. Her husband was dead, and she was free to
attempt to help her country in what she thought to be its
hour of need. She wrote letters to a Dutch friend—the
manager of Dierks & Co., fruit merchants—in which she
said that the birds were endangering the pike in the pond
of a London park, and that the attempt to keep down the
carp by introducing the pike was a failure. Under cross-
examination, she was unable to keep up the pretence.
Pike meant submarines; carp meant merchantmen, and
birds were Allied aeroplanes. The submarine campaign,
in other words, was in her opinion a failure. We usually
let that sort of letter go through with one or two discreet
additions; but we took precautions to prevent Mrs. Smith
getting herself into any further trouble.
Eva de Bournanville was a French Swede, and called
herself an actress. She was arrested for attempting to send
military information to Stockholm by writing it in invisible
ink between the lines of a family letter. The news she was
sending was of vital interest, and she seemed to have some
dangerous power of collecting it. She was condemned to
hang, but the sentence was commuted to penal servitude
for life. Her spirits were not dashed, however, and she
wrote from prison asking specially that her evening frocks
TRAITORS WITHIN
156
might be saved for her till she should want them again,
and giving detailed instructions on how to wrap them.
Madame Popovitch in Malta sent cypher telegrams of
steamer sailings and arrivals from the island, to an agent
in Spain, who was said to have passed them on to sub¬
marines. In this connection I was told an amusing story
by an Intelligence Officer who was serving in Malta at
the time. The island is always a hot place, and our troops
there suffered somewhat from “ drought.” On one
occasion they had run absolutely out of beer, and on a
sweltering morning some hundreds of them lined the
harbour ready to give a rousing cheer to the ship which
was due to arrive with a drinkable cargo. But Madame
Popovitch had sent a telegram about that ship, and while
the vessel was waiting outside the harbour for the boom
to be swung aside, a torpedo sank her under the soldiers'
very eyes! Never, said my friend, had he heard such
language as resulted when the men saw that cargo wasted
and realized that they would have to drink undiluted water
for another week. This lady’s code was found in a tattered
dictionary in which certain words had alternative secret
meanings written beside them. She was not young nor
beautiful, but portly and voluble. When she was questioned
she looked round for something to throw at her examiners,
and failing that, shouted them down. She was subse¬
quently proved insane, though her telegrams were sane and
dangerous enough.
A little later in the year, a girl travelling to Madrid with
an old duenna was arrested in England. She had a suspicious
amount of luggage—seventeen trunks—and her passport
was more than doubtful. When the trunks were examined,
one of them contained a number of notebooks and papers,
and also nine Iron Crosses! The duenna, fearing for her
own skin, turned King’s Evidence and said that the girl
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157
was a relation of a German diplomatic official in Spain,
and that she was on her way to him with information she
had obtained in England. Both women were imprisoned,
and two neutral powers asked for their release, but without
effect.
CHAPTER X
Mr. Rowland goes to the Tower—Blindfolded with his lover’s
handkerchief—The tragic story of Sir Roger Casement.
T HE first thing that the Postal authorities handed
to me from Mr. Rowland was a London evening
newspaper. It looked an innocent parcel, fastened
in a news wrapper, and without any writing apparent on it
at all. I tested it, however; and in the blank stop-press
column came up a message written in German. One thing
Mr. Rowland had forgotten when he addressed that news¬
paper which alone would have betrayed the communication
as a suspicious one; he had begun with the name of the
country, then written the town, and ended with the name
of the person to whom the paper was addressed. Americans
don’t address letters in that fashion, but Germans always
do!
Then came a four-page letter. That also looked innocent
enough until we heated it, and then the invisible writing
began to show. Newspaper and letters were all signed
“ George T. Parker,” evidently so that, should their
contents be discovered, their authorship would be harder
to bring home on Rowland himself. The letter finally
proved his guilt, and I went along to his hotel to ask him
to come with me to the Yard.
I asked him to let me see his passport first of all. He
produced it, saying in his nasal voice that I would find it
in order and that he would be glad to have my apologies.
Superficially, it looked natural enough; under my pocket
158
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*59
magnifying glass I noticed that the American eagle on it
had one claw inverted and had three too few feathers in the
tail. The paper looked to me (and was afterwards proved
to be) of the wrong texture and size for a genuine American
passport. The seal was shown by chemical tests to be
made of a wax giving wrong acid tests for an American seal.
I asked my man if I could look round his room, though
I said nothing immediately about the errors in the passport.
He stared at me, went rather white, sat down and nodded.
He was not a strong type, and his nerves had already
started to go to bits.
In his bag were two bottles about whose contents I had
some questions to ask. One smelt strongly of lemons,
and was a plain white glass bottle containing a colourless
liquid. The other, which was labelled “ Hair Tonic ”
in a small, neat hand on white paper, contained a yellow,
mobile liquid. I asked what kind of hair tonic it was, and
Rowland gulped a little and said that he did not know,
but that it had been given him by a chemist in America.
I put the two bottles in my pocket. Later, in the laboratory,
the first was proved to contain a mixture of formalin and
lemon-juice, which was the liquid used in writing the
hidden messages on the newspaper and on the letter in our
possession; the “ hair tonic ” was another invisible ink
preparation which would only answer to chemical tests,
whereas the first would become visible by passing a hot iron
over the paper on which it was used.
On a bureau in the bedroom lay a number of sheets of
smooth writing paper, suitable for use with these “ inks,”
and exactly similar in watermark and texture to the ones
on which the letter in our possession had been written.
There, too, was a pen with its nib discoloured with a brown
stain, but not marked with ink. In a writing case were
three letters from Mrs. Wertheim, giving information from
160 TRAITORS WITHIN
Rosyth and arranging meetings with him so that he could
take other information and pass it on to Germany and
elsewhere.
Finally, I told Rowland that he was under arrest, and
must come with me. The man broke down pitifully.
He began with threats, saying that I was interfering with
the rights of an American citizen. I explained to him that
his passport was faulty, and that we had stopped some of
his letters with information secretly conveyed between the
lines. His mouth opened and shut; suddenly he screamed
in a high, broken voice for mercy. I tried to quiet him,
and explained that he would be given every chance to prove
himself innocent at his trial.
His bravado had now gone altogether, and he started
to babble. At first, his statements were so mixed that they
were not understandable; afterwards he quietened, and I
got a scrappy account of his adventures. He had been
taught in a German spy school at Antwerp, and shown
how to write with invisible inks, taught secret signs and
codes (which he demonstrated to me with indecent haste),
and given other spies’ addresses. These, to his credit, he
would not disclose. He had been told to get into touch
with Mrs. Wertheim, and work with her, acting chiefly as
an agent for redirecting the news she could obtain. He
said with sobs that he had fallen in love with her on sight,
and that she had used all her undoubted fascination to make
him spend on her pleasures all the money he received for
spying. He said that he was at that moment in debt to the
hotel he lived in, and that his partner saw to it that when
any fresh amounts of money came, she obtained them
directly or else made him spend them on her. She had
even, he said, threatened to expose him to the police, and
to tell his employers that he was a traitor to them.
His American twang he had learned in Antwerp; he
REGINALD ROWLAND alias GEORGE BREECKOW FRANK L. T. GREITE
German subject, with forged American passport. Arrested at American citizen by naturalization. Arrested at Cambridge Street,
Ivanhoe Hotel, Bloomsbury, London, for espionage. Sentenced London, W. 2, for espionage. Sentenced to ten years penal servitude
to death at Old Bailey 29th September, 1915. Shot at Tower of 19th August, 1916.
London 26th October, 1915.
ESPIONAGE
161
was in reality the son of a quiet old man who strung pianos
and lived in Stettin in Germany. He had fallen among
bad companions and been forced to spend above his income;
had falsified the books of a German bank, and had been
saved from imprisonment by offering to serve as a spy.
He asked me if I could prevent his real name from being
made public at his trial, and seemed overcome with tearful
gratitude when I offered to try to do so. It would, he said,
perhaps kill the old man in Stettin, who believed his son
to be serving honourably in the army in Flanders. His
name was not divulged, and the piano-maker was left to
dream his dreams in peace. Rowlands said that his pass¬
port had been faked from a photographic plate, and that
most of the spies who came to England had their passports
similarly prepared by Flores, the head of the school in
Antwerp—apparently my old friend of Rotterdam.
Rowland and Mrs. Wertheim were tried together at
the Old Bailey in the autumn of 1915. The woman was
given ten years penal servitude, only escaping capital
punishment because there was a prejudice against executing
women. Rowland, rather to my surprise, was sentenced
to be shot at the Tower. He had regained some of his
dignity, but he was still a pitiful spectacle, and he almost
broke down on hearing sentence passed. At the Tower,
when he came to face the firing party, he requested in a
broken voice that he might be blindfolded with his lover’s
handkerchief, and produced from his pocket a tiny scrap
of perfumed cambric with the initials “ L.W.” embroidered
in coloured silk in one corner. The thing was far too short
to go round his head, but the officer in charge of the firing
party tied it inside a bigger handkerchief, next his eyes.
It seemed to comfort him, yet it is to be doubted whether
his accomplice was worth so much devotion. She was
selfish, hysterical and untrustworthy to an extreme degree.
162 TRAITORS WITHIN
She did not survive her sentence, but died at Broadmoor
Asylum in 1921.
Early in 1916 another form of trouble presented itself
to those responsible for keeping the peace within our
borders. Word was received that Sir Roger Casement had
attempted to effect a landing in Ireland, with German arms
and a sprinkling of German troops. To realize the power
of that menace, it is necessary to go back a little in history.
At the time of the outbreak of war Ireland was seething
with rebellious anger, rifles in great quantities were every¬
where displayed, and the Home Rule Bill had broken down
in Parliament. With typical Irish spirit, the population
decided on August 4th to suspend hostilities for the period
of the War, and the dash and courage of Irish troops in that
struggle is too well known to need any reference here.
But meanwhile German propaganda and German agents
had been busy in a country which it is almost impossible
effectively to police. Touch was maintained with Germany
through Irish-American channels. The Irish Citizen Army
and the Irish Volunteers agreed, with very great reluctance,
to effect an armed rising in Spring 1916, if an Irishman of
repute would lead them and if the chances looked hopeful.
Sir Roger Casement, dreamer, poet and adventurer,
had got to Germany in 1914. His life was spent praying
for an opportunity to make a united Ireland free of what
he sincerely believed to be “ the English yoke.” During
1915 he interviewed a number of Irish soldiers in German
prison camps, trying to persuade them to join with him
in a fantastic endeavour to “ liberate ” Ireland. He saw
over a hundred men, and convinced only six or seven.
Three or four times during the year the Germans promised
him arms and a vessel to take him back to his country, but
each time the effort was postponed.
Finally, Casement would wait no longer, and accept no
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163
more promises. He said he would go to America if the
needed help was not forthcoming. Reluctantly, the
Germans (who needed all the arms they had for their own
use) loaded a tramp steamer, the Auk, with 1,200 tons of
rifles and ammunition and a dozen machine-guns, under
a light layer of timber, and put Casement himself aboard a
submarine. This was at the time that conscription for
Ireland was first mooted, and the intention was to use that
suggestion as a lever with which to raise the flag of rebellion
in Ireland.
The submarine commander, when Casement came
aboard, commented on the scantiness of his luggage and
asked whether he would need anything else. “ Only my
shroud,” was the reply. Off Ireland Casement and his
two followers got into a canvas collapsible boat, and tried
to row inshore, while the submarine rapidly sank beneath
the waves to avoid the look-out of patrol boats. The boat
was smashed as she ran inshore, and all three men were
miserably soaked. The two ex-soldiers went off to try to
discover something of the spirit of the neighbourhood
while Casement rested on the beach.
Meanwhile, the Auk had succeeded in running the
Naval blockade and had loomed up in a sea mist off the
Irish coast at the prearranged spot. But no Irish Volunteers
awaited her landing. Instead, a British patrol boat came
hurrying towards her, and fired a shot across her bows.
The skipper of the Auk ran up the German flag, and,
realizing that his mission had failed, and not wishing his
cargo to fall into British hands, courageously blew up his
vessel before she could be boarded. Casement and his
friends having been arrested by police, he was himself
escorted to England for trial. I saw him in the court, a
man whose whole life had been ruined by frustrated hopes
for his country, a pale-faced dreamer who said that he had
TRAITORS WITHIN
164
always had a foreshadowing of such an end. He was truly
a great patriot, and he had been misled by men more
unscrupulous and plausible than himself. He ended his
unhappy life at the hands of the hangman at Pentonville.
Even his enemies were forced to admire the man’s sincerity,
but at that time he was too dangerous to us to be left alive.
Meanwhile the proposed Irish Rebellion had petered out.
Rebels seized various strategic points in Dublin, but the
heart of the people was against them, and they were isolated
and overpowered. Fifteen leaders of the rising were
executed, and some 3,000 Irishmen who had taken part
in it were interned in England for a few months.
CHAPTER XI
The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener—Spies who claimed the toll of the
Hampshire —Frank Greite is caught—-The Indian Plots.
H OW many German spies claimed that they had
supplied the information that led to the torpedoing
of the Hampshire ? One man who published his
memoirs in Germany a month or so ago said that he lived
in England throughout most of 1916, undetected by the
police, and that he escaped to Holland after sending a
number of important signals to submarines from a lonely
part of the Yorkshire coast, one of which signals he claimed
described the date of departure and route of the vessel
which foundered, sinking Russia’s last hopes. And one
other man, Heinz Hickman, made a statement that seems
to me to be of more value in deciding the question than
any other evidence we have. He was an engineer on the
U22, the submarine which sank the Hampshire. When he
lay dying in a Philadelphia hospital, he solemnly swore
that his ship received a wireless from Germany saying that
spies in London had communicated that Lord Kitchener
would be aboard the Hampshire and had given her sailing
date and route, and that the captain of the U22 was
decorated with the Iron Cross for intentionally selecting
that ship as his victim.
So much for statements. My own certain knowledge of
the matter is not great. A Detective-Sergeant of the Special
Department, a man called MacLaughlin, whom I knew
quite well and who was Kitchener’s personal attendant,
165
TRAITORS WITHIN
166
went aboard the vessel with the great soldier, and I know
that not even MacLaughlin himself knew the time the
boat would sail. In fact, I believe it depended on Kitchener’s
work in London, and was not settled until the Field-
Marshal stepped on board. I am confident in saying that,
beyond one or two personal friends of the soldier, no one
could have known exactly when the Hampshire would
leave for Russia. That she was bound for Russia was,
however, more or less of an open secret in official circles,
and might perhaps have been discovered by a very clever
spy. How such a person could have got the news to
Germany is beyond my imagination. Not, I believe,
through any postal or telephonic method; the only suppo¬
sition is through signalling from the coast. That was how,
in after years, one ex-spy of my earlier acquaintance said
that he had done it; but his word was not reliable at the
best of times, and I very much doubt whether it was more
than an empty boast on his part. At any rate, I can dispel
the rumours that the way the news leaked out was ever
discovered, and that the survivors of the Hampshire were
sworn to secrecy. No one has ever discovered the exact
causes which resulted in this grim tragedy of the sea.
Immediately after the tragedy had echoed with such
sickening effect through the Allied countries, I arrested
one proven spy in London. This man was Frank L. Greite,
and he gave himself away in a curious manner. A letter
was posted in a South Coast town, addressed to Sweden,
and with no signature or address of departure. Between
the lines of that letter were several statements concerning
the sailing of steamers from England.
I went through the aliens’ list in the town where the
letter was posted, and got the address of a man who had
formerly lived in Manchester. But by that time he was
no longer on the coast; he had gone to London to try to
ESPIONAGE
167
discover facts about the shipping to and from there. I
traced him to a lodging in Edgware Road and he was in
when I called. Asked what his trade was, he said he was
an American newspaper correspondent, over in England
to send war news to his paper. He named as his employer
the proprietor of a famous New York syndicate. I asked
him what a forme was like, and he could not tell me. I
asked him various questions about the way in which he
sent his stories, which he said went by cable, and he made
gross errors in his answers—obviously he had never sent
a cable to New York in his life. Finally, I found the usual
invisible ink saturated into the material of his tie.
When I said he must come to the Yard he attacked me
with a small sandbag which he drew from his pocket.
But I was ready for that, and was able to disarm him and
take him along with me without much trouble, though he
was an athletic and vigorous man. He was duly tried and
convicted, and proved to be a German who had naturalized
as an American citizen. His sentence was ten years penal
servitude.
At the time that these things were going on at home,
German agents were no less busy abroad, and our police
and Intelligence officials in India particularly had their
hands full. One of the most interesting ventures of the
War was neatly foiled by an Intelligence officer from whom
I afterwards had the story of his adventures, and I do not
think they will be out of place here as a comparison of
Secret Service work abroad with our own work at home.
In the bazaars of Calcutta my friend heard whispers
that liberation had been promised to India, and that it
was now very near. More to the point, certain rich mer¬
chants came to him with a story that Calcutta was to be
seized and sacked in what promised to be somewhat of a
repetition of the Mutiny. His own native agents, on
168 TRAITORS WITHIN
seeking, came across an alarming story. German officers
had been promised, immense quantities of arms were said
to be on their way to India, a disaffected hill tribe in the
north had recently been using in hunting modern Mauser
rifles, and known agitators had been moving through the
villages preaching a Jehad against British tyranny.
Before long, and by the accident of one of his men
overhearing a conversation when he woke in the night in
a native lodging-house where he was sleeping, this officer
added some vital parts to the puzzle. German arms had
been promised from California, Germans in America had
promised to come and drill the hill tribes in a looting rush
down into Calcutta, money was promised with which to
buy over dozens of those little chieftains who exist along
the frontier line and who will wage war on their best
friends for a mercenary’s wages and a chance of plunder.
Calcutta was a prize which must have seemed a very
promise of Paradise to them, with its great warehouses and
millionaire native merchants.
The German steamer Maverick actually left San Pedro
with 30,000 rifles aboard, 400 rounds for each, two lakhs
of rupees (about £10,000) and a number of Germans as
passengers. Simultaneously, the German Consul in Siam
despatched a vessel carrying 5,000 rifles, thousands of
rounds of ammunition, and one lakh of rupees. We
could have prevented the sailing of these ships, but, as the
Bengal Government had had time to get matters nicely
into order, it was thought wiser to let them get into the
Indian Ocean, when they discovered one morning long
grey shapes bearing down on them. The battleships drew
abreast, put prize crews aboard, and convoyed those useful
arms and that helpful money to a port where they could
serve the Allies. From Shanghai a few days later, two
other ships sailed, all unsuspecting, carrying big cargoes
ESPIONAGE
169
of rifles, machine-guns, explosives and money. They were
duly collected and shepherded to suitable destinations.
In Bengal itself, the plotters, unaware of the failure of
the attempts to supply them with the sinews of war, held
a midnight gathering to address (and impress) a certain
wavering native princeling who was almost persuaded to
join them. Into his palace in the midst of the conclave
marched a dust-flecked English Colonel, his aide, and
half a dozen native officers. With Eastern fatality, the
palace guards did not attempt to resist their entry. In the
room the plotters moved menacingly towards the new¬
comers, hands on knives. The Colonel told them to look
from the window before they committed themselves further.
The moonlit courtyard outside was full of mounted troops,
sitting silent. The plotters surrendered and the German
hopes of a new Mutiny were dispelled for ever.
A persistent people, however, our enemies of that day.
A very short while after this Mutiny plot had failed among
the Hindus, they had a try to inflame the Mohammedans
into rebellion. Certain letters, written on yellow silk and
signed by a number of really unimportant agitators who
claimed to represent Mohammedan India, were sent to the
Tsar of Russia, asking him to abandon his alliance with
England, and offering him India as a price. Indian
Mohammedans, said the letters, would rise to support
even a small Russian army coming down through the
Afghan passes; and the Afghan tribes were, according to
this specious missive, being approached for their support.
Actually, the fantastic story in no way represented the
feelings of the vast majority of Mohammedans in India,
who have always been most loyal to this country. The
Afghans themselves are Mohammedans, and when the
emissaries of the plotters approached them, they found a
reception so unpleasant that not all of them won back safely
TRAITORS WITHIN
170
to India again. A man called Maulvi Obeidulla, previously
trained as a Maulvi (a kind of teacher-priest) in a Moham¬
medan school, had earlier received a declaration of a Jehad,
or Holy War of the Crescent, from a Turkish official named
Ghalib Pasha, who also promised Turkish Mohammedan
help to any rising in India. Assisting him was an Indian
of the name of Mahendra Pratap, who declared himself
the King of India, and said he was descended from the old
Moghul Kings. These people sent their silk letters on a
gold plate to the Tsar.
The details of the story sound as fantastic as the Arabian
Nights Entertainments, or a children’s Eastern fable, but
the plot had the official support of the Count von Zimmer¬
man, one of the most famous German diplomats of the
war years. However, it all ended in a few arrests (Ghalib
Pasha was captured among the rest), while the self-styled
King of India had to flee for his life. India’s loyal Moham¬
medans were furious at the things which had been promised
in the name of their religion, and publicly approved the
breaking up of the plot. It sounds foolish on paper, but
at the time men who knew thoroughly the temperamental
nature of the Indian masses, ready to be swayed to any
absurdity by a mere slogan or rumour, said that the destruc¬
tion of the Silk Letters Plot, as it was called, was worth to
us more than a victorious pitched battle on the Western
Front.
CHAPTER XII
The Movie-agent spy—His work before the War—A bottle of
ammonia—An indiscreet M.P.—The prisoner who walked to
London.
I N the years before the War, the Special Department
was rather troubled by the movements of a Dutch Jew
theatrical manager of the name of Leo Pickard. He
travelled round England with a most interesting “ show ”
—a troupe of dwarfs and midgets. Curiously enough, he
seemed not to find any profit except in places like Aldershot
and Salisbury, and in our Naval ports. There, despite
small audiences, he would stay a long while; in promising
towns like Manchester and Sheffield, he appeared to find
no interest whatever. We kept a sharp eye on his activities,
but he certainly did nothing to add to our suspicions.
Occasionally he went over to Holland, when, of course,
we lost sight of him; on one occasion, at least, he was
believed to have had a personal interview with Steinhauer
while over there, but we had no definite proof of it.
A famous midget couple, the Brazilian Gondins, said
to be the smallest conjuring couple in the world, worked
for Pickard. They were little over three feet high, and
they at least were innocent of the taint of spying as far as
we could tell. A dwarf girl of the name of Little Mary,
however, brought considerable suspicion on herself just
before the War, when she was in Pickard’s troupe at a
time that some important military documents disappeared
for a while, and we were morally certain then that Pickard
had something sinister to do with the matter. Just after
171
TRAITORS WITHIN
172
this, Pickard himself ceased his wanderings and became
manager of the Bijou Theatre at Hampstead; residents of
that part of London may remember a tall, sallow man with
a slight cast in one eye, who was always to be seen outside
the box office of the “ Bijou ” at that time.
When war broke out, he left his position and became a
cinematograph film dealer, which, as the Yard speedily
noticed, caused him to move along his old round again,
in and out of the military and naval towns. During 1914
and 1915 he seemed to do very little, and certainly he sent
no news abroad. He was spending his money at a rate
which must soon have left him almost penniless; and in the
early part of 1916 he began buying some second-hand films
in England for export to Holland. Three times during
that summer he made a personal visit to the Film Censor
authorities, asking their permission to send 50,000 feet
of film to Holland, to a man called Blom. On a police
recommendation that permission was refused.
A few days after his last application Pickard walked into
a restaurant off Long Acre, and sat down at the only dis¬
engaged table. Two minutes later, another man entered
and sat down at the same table. He got into conversation
with the newcomer, and was surprised to find him a film
agent also. Pickard started fiercely abusing the Censors
for what he called their senseless restriction on business.
Then he winked. " But they can’t stop me sending stuff
over to Holland,” he whispered. “ And I make better
money because they can’t get much from here. Look! ”
And he pulled out a thick wad of notes and displayed them
before his companion’s eyes. His companion—myself—
realized immediately that all that money had not been
earned by the trade which Pickard outwardly pursued.
I warned the Censor to look out for his letters to Blom
of Holland. A day or two later the Censor had a letter in
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ESPIONAGE
173
his hands, signed Leo Pickard, saying that trade was very
bad in London, and that nothing could be done until the
Film Censors could be won over. I tested the letter to
make sure that it was quite free from hidden messages, and
finally let it go. In due course there came a reply from
P. Blom, suggesting that Pickard should try what he could
do in the provinces, especially the seaports. It was obvious
that our seaports would not have any second-hand films
for sale. I went round to Pickard’s lodgings, very early
in a cold winter morning.
An untidy girl opened the door an inch or two and said
through the crack that she was Mrs. Pickard, and that her
husband was out. That was six o’clock. I explained that
I was a detective officer, and must search the house. The
girl looked as if she would slam the door in my face; then
thought better of it. “ He’s in bed, if you must know,”
she said sullenly as we went up the stairs, “ and he don’t
want to be disturbed.”
The man lying in bed in the mouldy-smelling room
looked at the girl as I entered in a way that made her
cringe and whimper some excuse. But Mr. Pickard had
finished his brutality in that quarter for a little while.
Under the bed was a squat ink-bottle filled with a
yellowish liquid. Lemon-juice and formalin again, by the
smell of it, for flung into one corner of the squalid room
was a squeezed lemon, and the bottle smelt strongly of the
juice. With a good deal of profanity, Pickard asked me
what I was doing. When I silently held up the bottle, he
swore horribly and told me to put it down. “ It’s eyebrow
restorer, blast you,” he shouted, “ and I don’t want to have
to make more of it because of a-fool of a policeman.”
I put it in my pocket, and told him shortly enough to get
up and dress.
The girl who had come to the door was by this time in
TRAITORS WITHIN
174
floods of tears. She admitted that she was Pickard’s
mistress, and that she worked in a nearby restaurant,
where he had scraped an acquaintance with her. I told
her to go home, and she went off, crying quietly. In an
empty room on the ground floor I found several rolls of
cinematograph film. I undid a length of one of the rolls,
and found on its edge certain markings. Holding it up
to the light I could read detailed information scratched on
the edge which, had it gone abroad, would have done us
incalculable harm. This man was a dangerous spy indeed.
On a mantelpiece in the room was a bottle of ammonia,
and a pen whose nib was corroded with ammonia and smelt
faintly of it. I asked Pickard, who had now donned a
rather flashy suit, what he used ammonia for in his work.
“ Cleaning the films before I send them abroad,” he
replied, with a further flow of abuse and blasphemy.
Ammonia, of course, destroys films, not cleans them.
I took the man along with me, and for all his threats, he
did not lift a finger to resist. Sitting in the taxi, he tried
a new course. As we bumped along in the darkness he
said in a wheedling tone that he could give me some useful
information about spies if I liked to have it. I told him
to wait till we reached the Yard. When we got there, he
was all ready to turn King’s Evidence—for a price. He
was told that nothing whatever could be promised him,
but that the fact would be mentioned at his trial. The
information he gave us was as much false as true, but some
of it served us later. At his trial he escaped the death
penalty, but was given penal servitude for life. In later
years, in Germany, he was said to have boasted that he had
been responsible for the sinking of the Hampshire , but that
also, no doubt, was a lie, though he certainly had access
to very secret and important military information before
his arrest.
ESPIONAGE
n 5
Shortly after this I was called to the Yard one morning
and shown a copy of a leading American newspaper. There,
in staring headlines, was a report of the blowing-up of a big
munition dump behind our lines in France, in which a
number of men had been killed and injured. The story
was a good deal exaggerated; and I was told that the
same story, very much more enlarged, had been printed
in the German papers, and was very bad propaganda for
us in Germany. Certain data was given me, showing that
the article had been constructed from facts sent in a letter
to a Russian in New York, a man named Raffalovich, and
that the letter had originated from an English Member of
Parliament. This man’s house in Surrey I was instructed
to raid.
Examination of the house showed that the M.P. had
apparently been indiscreet rather than malevolent. There
were letters there from his American correspondent, and
it was obvious that he had sent the story to America; but
it was also obvious that he was as loyal as myself. He was,
however, tried and fined ^ioo and 25 guineas costs, as a
warning to others not to be so careless with news which
might harm our country if allowed to go abroad. A little
later, the Member, who took his reproof in rather bad part,
complained in the House that plain-clothes police were
present, and was told by the Speaker that, in view of certain
threats of physical violence from an unruly Irish faction,
the Speaker had himself applied for police protection.
At this time a letter from Copenhagen to Berlin was put
by accident into the English bag. It stated quite openly
that the writer, who had left the letter unsigned, was starting
for England as a spy, his nominal trade being the sale of
those little gas-lighters which make a spark when the
trigger is pulled. Without a signature or any clue to the
date of arrival, we were not greatly helped; but a couple of
TRAITORS WITHIN
176
weeks later, our search for a suspicious seller of lighters
was rewarded. A young Jew had been caught trying to
board a ship at Newcastle, apparently in the hope of going
back to Scandinavia, and his stock-in-trade was a case full
of the lighters in question.
When I first saw this man he was full of righteous
indignation. I asked him a few questions, including one
about his destination when he reached Copenhagen. He
promptly gave me the address which was on the letter we
had intercepted! I took it from my pocket, read him the
address and began to read the letter. The man jumped to
his feet, clicked his heels and saluted. “ Sir,” he said,
“you are quite right. I am a German soldier; I con¬
fess it.”
That, however, was not a perfectly correct statement of
the case. Search in our records proved him to be a criminal
released from a German prison after a couple of days’
detention, fairly obviously for spying. Among his effects
were found the usual invisible writing set, and certain
notes on the backs of old envelopes that showed that he
was not a safe man to leave at liberty. He was hanged at
Wandsworth, but he kept his courage till the last.
Like almost all the other German spies, he incurred
suspicion by making no obvious efforts to follow the trade
by which he was supposed to make money to live. He had
the lighters in his case, and seemed to think that a sufficient
alibi; during two days in which he was shadowed by the
police he made no effort whatever to sell his goods. Yet
he had plenty of money, and received more by post from
a Scandinavian address; a very unusual thing for an out-at-
elbows street hawker. As far as we could tell, his lighter
stock was untouched when he was arrested.
Among all these stories of police successes it seems only
fair to tell one tale against ourselves. Otto Homke, a
ESPIONAGE
177
German naval prisoner of war, escaped from Bramley Camp
in Hampshire. He could speak no English and had no
disguise to cover his grey German jumper, grey shorts and
top boots. He walked stolidly up to the nearest policeman,
and said in an enquiring tone, “ London ? ” The police¬
man pointed out the main road through Basingstoke and
replied, “ Straight on, Sir ! ”
By the time he had got a few miles on his road his escape
had been discovered, and a hue and cry was set up after
him. But he plodded steadily on towards London, feeding
on apples and pears, and sleeping under hedges. For
seventeen days he eluded all our police forces; and then,
asking a City policeman the way to the Docks, his luck
deserted him and he was arrested. Poor Otto ; he almost
deserved to get away with it!
M
CHAPTER XIII
George Vaux Bacon and the pseudo-American journalist spies—The
man who taught Swedish drill—Germany’s nastiest spy is shot
dead.
D URING 1916 attempts were made to blow up
several munition dumps in England. Two of
the attempts were fruitless because the plots were
discovered before any harm had taken place; the other
was partly successful, an explosion being caused, but only
a little harm being done because of the prompt application
of various safety devices. In connection with these efforts,
however, we came upon certain lines of suspicion, and these
led to a number of so-called American journalists then in
England.
Nothing could be proved against these men, fifteen of
whom we suspected in Britain and Ireland. They repre¬
sented various American papers, went all over the country
collecting news, but otherwise behaved in an exemplary
manner. The only doubtful action on their part was that
one or other of them was constantly visiting the United
States, so that there was hardly ever a month in which no
visit had been made. That was not in accordance with
ordinary newspaper procedure.
After some time we narrowed down our clues, and found
that all fifteen of these reputed journalists were in touch
with two men in the United States, one of whom was
dramatic critic of the Deutsche Journal , and the other a
German naturalized in America. This discovery was soon
178
ESPIONAGE
179
followed by another. The men who visited America always
reported personally to one or both of these individuals.
America, at that time, was still neutral, so we could not
trace very exactly what was happening there, but things
began to look black for the suspected men in this
country.
One of their number was a typical American-looking
man, called George Vaux Bacon. Thin, hard-bitten, nattily
dressed, and wearing yellow low-cut shoes, this man’s
twang was the only thing that was doubtful about him.
It was a little too pronounced. He travelled about England
and Ireland a good deal, and had already made a couple
of visits to America when we came across a really suspicious
bit of evidence against him. That was just after Christmas
1916.
He had been for two or three weeks staying in London
and endeavouring, as he explained it, to obtain for his paper
some articles on the air defences of the city. He had
certainly been suspiciously eager in seeking information
about our anti-aircraft guns, defence squadrons of planes,
and so on, and we had reason to believe at the Yard that he
had collected rather too much. We had not gained any
tangible evidence against him, however, and were hoping
to catch him out when he tried to send the details he had
discovered to his employers in the States. His general
correspondence gave us no clue; indeed, he and his friends
seldom wrote letters except the merest formal communi¬
cations. But I felt a conviction in my bones that the
man was a spy; and at that time we were suffering quite
enough from raids without the additional trouble of
Germany knowing the arrangement of our London air
defences.
A couple of days later Bacon went over to Dublin, and
this time I went along in his train. In Dublin he went
180 TRAITORS WITHIN
straight to an hotel where another of the pseudo-journalists
was staying. I went, too; and the first thing I learned was
that the man he had come to see was due to return to
America the same week. Coming immediately on top of
all my doubts, this journey seemed very suspicious indeed.
It occurred to me with startling clearness that I had stumbled
on the way the leakage of information was guided to
Germany; a homing “journalist ” took it in person to the
American agents, and they conveyed it from America by
some method of their own.
Mr. Bacon, when I called on him, was bluff and business¬
like. Sure I could have a look at his room; any help he
could give me was mine for the asking. Yes; he’d come to
see his friend off, and to ask him to take over one or two
little messages to friends at home. Nothing wrong in that,
he hoped. And could I tell him anything about the air
defences of London ? Oh, come, now—a Detective-
Inspector would sure know something useful about it ?
He was real interested in the subject, and was trying to
make one or two good articles about it with a touch of
truth and sincerity in them.
I could find nothing wrong with his room. The man
himself sounded as innocent as I was. I was just going to
go out when my eyes fell on his hand, which was resting on
the table where he sat. It was a hard, strong hand, and the
nails were none too well cared for; and yet, on his dressing-
table lay an expensive tortoise-shell mounted manicure set.
His hands had not been manicured for weeks, beyond
ordinary nail-cutting. I turned back into the room, and
in turning noticed for the first time the top of a novel
sticking out of his pocket. He had kept it hidden before,
apparently. I asked him to let me have a look at it, and
he cheerfully drew it out of his pocket and passed it to me.
The pages of it seemed ordinary enough; but on the inside
ANTON BAUMBERG (“COUNT ANTON DE BORCH”) AND THE
SEAL HE INVARIABLY USED
ESPIONAGE
x 81
of both front and back covers were a number of minute
pricks. I put it in my pocket, and went over and collected
the manicure set from the dressing-table. Its implements
were perfectly clean, but one of them was pointed and
might well have made those pin-pricks. And the tube of
nail-polish was of a thin, colourless kind I had never seen
before. This tube was half-emptied, but the little pad
with which it should have been applied had never been
used.
“ You must come with me, Mr. Bacon,” I said, rather
triumphantly.
The man’s nerve was splendid. He showed just the
right amount of annoyance, without offering to resist. He
threatened that we would have to pay heavy damages for
wrongful arrest, and asked if he could send a note down
to his friend below. I told him it would depend on what
he wanted to say. He replied that I could read it; and
asked me, as there was no notepaper in the room, whether
I would write it for him or let him write it on the flyleaf
of the novel I had taken from him. When I said that I
wanted the novel for evidence, and offered to write the
message on a leaf of my own notebook, he looked huffed
and said that it didn’t matter.
I believe that novel gave some little trouble before the
covers revealed their secrets. But after treatment with
certain chemicals, a map supposed to represent certain air
defences gradually appeared inside the front cover, and a
sketch of estimated aeroplane bases in another district
showed on the other. The second map was largely from
guesswork, and was only partly correct, but the first, as
far as it went, was dangerously nearly correct. If that map
had fallen into German hands incalculable harm might
have been done us.
The nail-polish was, as I had suspected, the secret ink
182 TRAITORS WITHIN
in which the plans were drawn. The prick-marks I had
noticed were places where guns were supposed to be
stationed; in trying to make dots the manicure implement
had occasionally proved too sharp. In February 1917
Bacon was tried before a Court Martial at the Guildhall at
Westminster. The solemn proceedings broke his nerve,
and he admitted his guilt, and said that the two American-
Germans, Sander and Wunnenberg, were his employers,
and that information was conveyed personally to them by
one or other of the pseudo-journalists on their visits to
America. That was the way in which he had intended to
send his plans of our air defences.
He was sentenced to death by hanging, but the sentence
was commuted to penal servitude for life. Before he had
served many months, however, the entry of America into
the War caused him to be sent over to America, to give
information about spies there. Sander and Wunnenberg
were arrested on his evidence, and were each sentenced to
two years imprisonment and a fine of 2,500 dollars. Both
men pleaded guilty without calling any defence, in order
to save the names of other spies in the States; but Bacon
gave away all the facts which they tried to hide, and in doing
so reduced his own sentence to a year and a day in prison
and a fine of one dollar.
The next troublesome case we had to attend to was
brought to our notice by an attendant at the Coldsterdale
Internment Camp, in Yorkshire. He had been given a
letter from one of the prisoners in the camp, addressed to a
man called Carl Gustav Yingquist, a medical gymnastic
director at Paddington. The letter was written in German,
and when the attendant had been going round the camp
seeing that everything was in order, the prisoner had
slipped it into his hand with a whispered mention of a
very substantial reward if he would have it delivered without
ESPIONAGE 183
submitting it to the camp censoring authorities. Instead,
he sent it to the Yard, with a covering note.
It was a candid letter. It said that Vingquist would
remember the writer as an old school friend, and asked for
money, a forged passport, and a map of the district in
which the camp was situated. If possible, passports were
to be sent for three other prisoners as well, as four of the
men at the camp had decided to make a joint break for
liberty. We photographed the letter and then sent it on
its way.
The answer Mr. Vingquist sent enclosed a big-scale
C.T.C. map of Coldsterdale district, and said that money
and passports were very difficult to obtain, because of
“ these pigs of English and their precautions.” So of course
I had to call on the abusive gentleman, and ask him to
answer for his sins in court. Swedish drill expert he may
have been, but he was emphatically a man of no physique,
and he looked as if he had never done a hard day’s work
in his life. He was still abusive in court, and was given
a sentence of six months’ hard labour, and recommended
for deportation. The man, Lundberg, who wrote to him
was a Swede who had been captured when serving with
the German army; he was warned not to make any further
attempts to escape.
In the autumn of 1917 Germany lost a man who might
fairly have claimed the title of her nastiest spy. And this
man did not die at the Tower or at the hands of the hang¬
man, but was shot by a young British officer home on leave.
The story is an interesting one, and I can mention it shortly
in passing. It began dramatically, when an Artillery
lieutenant walked into an Edgware Road police station
and gave himself up for shooting a man whom he described
as “ a Jewish spy.” Asked his reason for the shooting,
he replied that the man had been too intimate with his
TRAITORS WITHIN
184
wife, though he denied that anything more had happened
than that there was an attempt to persuade her to run
away from him while he was in France.
The details of the case showed very blackly on the dead
man’s character. A Jewish draper’s assistant, born in
Poland, he had changed his name when still in his early
twenties and claimed the title of Count Anton de Borch.
His real name was Anton Baumberg, and he made the
alteration because he did not wish his Jewish ancestry to
be obvious. He was in Berlin in 1914, and explained away
the visit by saying that he was trying to get work there.
Actually, he had been living with a notorious woman who
called herself the Baroness de Borch, and from that time,
in a mean and despicable way, he tried to send secret
information to Germany via her address in Holland.
In 1914 he had joined up and actually received a com¬
mission, but six months later he was expelled from the
Army with the indication that His Majesty had no further
wish for his services. He had then tried to obtain informa¬
tion from officers’ wives and in other very unpleasant ways,
and in 1917 had met the wife of the young Artillery officer,
who was then away at the Front. On his next leave that
officer had warned the bogus Count that he must leave
his wife alone in future; and when, on a later leave in the
autumn, he had come upon the man in the very act of
trying to persuade his young wife to run away with him,
he had drawn his service revolver and emptied all its
contents into the man’s body at close range. The dead
man, when I examined him, looked the epitome of mean¬
ness and beastliness. He had been receiving about .£100
a year from Holland, apparently for some sort of spied
information, and judging from his known character I
should say that he made up all the news he sold. The
lieutenant was found not guilty at his trial, and discharged
ESPIONAGE
l8 5
without a stain on his character, amid tremendous applause
and cheering. It was a decision and a scene very seldom
observed in an English court, but despite its irregularity
it seemed the only just and equitable decision possible
after such details as the case had presented.
CHAPTER XIV
An ex-Lord Mayor of Sheffield is degraded from knighthood—Fritz
Duquesne, the world’s master spy—Women spies have the last
word—Are there spies among us to-day ?
T HE most astounding arrest in England during
1918 was undoubtedly that of Sir Joseph Jonas,
ex-Lord Mayor of Sheffield, head of a huge steel¬
manufacturing firm, and supplier of vast amounts of
munitions to the Government for war use. This man had
been the friend of two Kings, and seemed to be the last
person in all England on whom suspicion could fall. He
had been born in Germany of German parents, but had
naturalized in this country as a young man. Starting a
small steel business in Sheffield he had married a Sheffield
woman, seen his shop prosper and spread till it employed
several thousands of workmen, and had gained the respect
of his fellow-townsmen. In 1905 he was knighted, and in
subsequent years he had given large sums of money to
charities, including considerable amounts to the University,
and he was universally considered to be a perfect choice
for the position of Lord Mayor.
During this time, of course, he had retained a large
number of German friends, notable among whom was a
young German of the name of Carl Hahn, and his father,
after whom he was named, both of whom lived in England.
Another friend and business acquaintance was a certain
Paul von Gontard, who was working just before the War
in Krupp’s armament works at Essen, and who opened a
steel works of his own in Berlin in the autumn of 1914.
186
ESPIONAGE
187
In the June of that year, a number of high officials from
Krupp’s made a trade visit to England, and were shown
over the Sheffield works, as well as over a number of other
big steel manufactories in this country.
On the outbreak of war, young Carl Hahn changed his
name by Deed Poll. Sir Joseph Jonas, who seemed as
English at heart as ever, obtained for his firm the biggest
allocations for high-grade steel of any firm in Sheffield.
During 1915 and 1916 it supplied practically all the
bayonet steel for the Allies, and its reputation was of the
highest.
I made a lightning raid on Sheffield, and brought the
73-year-old knight down to London with me, to answer a
grave charge of having collected information with intent
to convey it to the enemy. Then I went as speedily south¬
west to Cornwall, where I arrested Carl Hahn. I also
brought in Carl Hahn, the father. The substance of the
case against the three was that it was alleged that they had
attempted to convey to Germany details of a certain new
rifle that was then being officially tested.
Mr. Tindal Atkinson, K.C., appeared with Mr. Walter
Frampton for Sir Joseph; the late Sir Edward Marshall-
Hall, K.C., and the late Mr. Huntly Jenkins for Hahn
Junior; and Sir Ernest Wild, K.C., for Hahn, while they
were opposed by Sir Frederick Smith (Attorney-General),
Sir Richard Muir, and Mr. G. A. Branson for the Crown,
the case being tried before Mr. Justice P. O. Lawrence.
Altogether it was as nice a collection of legal brilliance
as I have ever seen in one court. The case lasted from
June 13th to July 30th, and was very keenly disputed.
But police evidence was incontrovertible, though even
now I am not permitted to say anything about the way in
which we obtained it. In the end, judgment went against
the ex-Lord Mayor, who was found guilty of grave mis-
188 TRAITORS WITHIN
demeanour, and called upon to pay a fine of £2,000, while
Hahn Junior had to pay £1,000; and costs—which must
have been enormous—were given against the defendants.
That was not quite the end of the matter. At the end
of August, Sir Joseph Jonas was degraded from his knight¬
hood by the King, and also denaturalized because of the
part he had played in the conspiracy. There were persons
in England at the time who thought that judgment harsh,
but they were people who knew little of the facts of the
case. I have been looking through my own notes, made
at the time and with full knowledge of all the turns of the
affair, and I think that the man who was once Lord Mayor
of Sheffield escaped very lightly indeed, probably on account
of his age and his firm’s former service to England.
Any account of spying in the war years would be incom¬
plete without a word on the astounding career of Fritz
Duquesne, the only man I have ever heard of who could
lay any claim to the title of a Master Spy. I never came
into contact with him because he never operated in this
country; but I would have given a year’s pay to enjoy a
tussle with this extraordinary man. During nearly the
whole of the War, he operated in South America, realizing
that he could harm us far more from such a place than he
could have done from England. That alone showed him
to be a man of foresight. Indeed, he was known as such
to us already, for he had featured as a successful spy and
had miraculously escaped from justice several times during
the South African War, when he worked for the Boers to
some considerable effect.
His first success in the Great War was the dynamiting
of the s.s. Salvador, by putting bricks of explosive material
among her coal. She left port for England with a food
cargo and was never heard of again. Doubtless she blew
herself to bits somewhere in the middle of the South
ESPIONAGE
189
Atlantic. The s.s. Vauban was almost destroyed by fire
following a similar explosion, but managed to limp into
Gibraltar with her cargo ruined and seven of her crew
killed. Bahia coaling station was mysteriously fired one
night, and the flames spread and destroyed the whole place.
H.M.S. Pembrokeshire was dynamited in the same way
as the Salvador , and four other merchant vessels left South
America and never reached a port, and were subsequently
claimed as his victims by Duquesne, who by the way was a
singularly modest man.
Three times during the War this will-o’-the-wisp was
sighted by detectives. Once, as he crept into the hold of
a half-freighted vessel in a South American port, a waiting
pursuer leapt out at him, but was stunned by a blow on the
head from a revolver butt. Once the house in which he
was lodging was surrounded and raided, and the man
escaped over the neighbouring flat roofs. And once, when
actually overpowered aboard a vessel he had come to sink,
he was put into a boat to be taken ashore, he managed to
leap overside and dive—and disappeared as if the sea had
swallowed him up.
The last time, he was believed to have been drowned,
but in 1919 a sharp-eyed detective in New York saw him
strolling along Broadway, dressed in the uniform of a
captain of the Australian Light Horse, and wearing medal
ribbons of the South African and Matebele wars and of the
Long Service Medal. He was arrested and clapped into
the strongest prison in New York to await extradition to
England to answer a charge of murdering British seamen.
Next morning, when the warders went with food to his
cell, it was empty, How he had escaped, no one ever knew.
The locks on the cell were unbroken, and there was no
other apparent exit save the closed door. The sentries in
the corridor outside had noticed no disturbance. A month
TRAITORS WITHIN
190
later the United States police received a letter from
Duquesne, written in his old spirited style, saying that he
had enjoyed his journey by car to a famous Philadelphia
air-field and had flown thence to Mexico. The letter bore
the Mexican stamp. Since then the man has disappeared
from view until recently, when he was dramatically re¬
arrested in New York. Will he, eventually, be brought back
to stand his trial in England ? Or is our Government ready
to let bygones be bygones in the case of this agent who,
as far as a spy could, played the man in the station to
which he was called.
Among the spies whom I arrested women had the last
word. In August 1918 a letter was stopped addressed to
a German Baroness in Dresden. It was a trivial letter
enough, talking mostly of women’s matters, till tested for
secret writing. Once more the familiar red writing began
to show. As a matter of fact, the information contained
in the letter was mostly wrong and not at all important,
but the intention of harming England was clear in every
line. I was obliged to arrest the author, a German-born
widow of a Prussian officer. At her house in the Tulse
Hill district lived also her daughter, a young married
woman who was even more fanatically pro-German than
her mother. In various parts of the house I found the
secret ink, the pen used to apply it, notepaper similar to
that used for the letter to Dresden, and a number of news¬
paper clippings reporting slight British reverses at the
Front, evidently to be sent with the idea of providing germs
for German newspaper articles which should show how
the brave German army was winning victory after victory
on the Western Front. The case was rather a tame one,
and the sentences were not heavy. The mother received
sentence of twelve months imprisonment in the second
division, the daughter was fined £50 and recommended
ESPIONAGE
I 9 I
for internment. A month or two afterwards the bugles
sounded “ Cease Fire,” and the spy menace in England
was over at last.
Are there spies in England to-day ? If I could answer
that question in the affirmative, the Yard would soon put
its hand on my examples and then I should be left as
uncertain as ever. On the whole, I should say that spying
since the War has become almost a dead letter. Unless
nations have the war spirit in their hearts, they don’t
bother to probe other nations’ secrets. And since the
Great War proved that modern warfare is as costly for the
victor as for the vanquished, there is a nausea at the very
name of hostilities. Besides which, police work is becoming
so highly organized and so aided by mechanical and
scientific devices that a spy would not really have much
chance. Thinking the matter well over, I should say that
serious spying is rapidly going the way of bows and arrows.
I believe that England’s war experiences wrote the last
chapter to a history of intrigue and secret service which has
gone on from the days of the fighting tribes of earliest
Palestine. Civilization has at long last succeeded in leaving
the spy no more than the pages of boys’ books as a wander¬
ing-place. He has fallen behind the times, and no one is
sorry. May he rest in peace and trouble us no more.
BOOK III
REFLECTIONS
N
CHAPTER I
Looking at crime to-day—The foreign criminal menace—How two
of them were caught—How to weed them out.
T HE obvious starting-place for a book on the police
outlook to-day is the subject of the foreign criminal,
for more than half our country’s police expenses
are directly attributable every year to the foreigners we
harbour. It is an accepted fact that nine-tenths of the
American gunmen are Italians, Russians, Scandinavians,
Germans and South Americans by descent, and that the
apaches of the Paris gutter number few true-bred French
men among them. Similarly, if Great Britain could sweep
out and keep out the non-British element of her criminal
world, the taxpayers’ burdens of police expenses would be
lowered by half.
Let me give a single example of a course of crime which
has no equal among the records of our home-born criminals.
A German Jew deliberately fired his furniture shop in
Shoreditch in December 1920. He made so much from
the insurance payments which covered his losses that he
suggested the same swindling scheme to a number of other
shopkeepers, sharing the profits with them. He accumu¬
lated several pieces of specially valuable charred furniture,
which he “ planted ” in the various premises which were
subsequently fired, and on which high insurance payments
could easily be claimed. For his own shop he received
£1,740, which was far more than it was worth; in 1922 he
claimed and received a big sum for a burglary; a few
months later he arranged a swindle over a burglary for
l 9S
TRAITORS WITHIN
196
which £1,760 was paid; and several claims for fires and
burglaries followed from various sources, all suggested by
this man during the next few months. An accomplice—
also a German Jew—claimed £10,000 for two fires in two
years. These two men together were said at their trial
to have been responsible for over a hundred fires and
burglaries in three years, and to have claimed something
like a quarter of a million pounds from various Insurance
Companies, most of which was paid. In 1923 the two
burned their clothing rather badly when a premature
explosion of some petrol they had taken to start a fire betrayed
them to a policeman who saw them run from the house just
after a fire had broken out. Both received long terms of
imprisonment and were recommended for deportation.
That sort of thing is a very un-English kind of crime.
Nor is the foreigner trouble confined to direct misdemean¬
ours. Without Orientals, our drug-pest could be extermin¬
ated quite easily, but drug-running indirectly employs in
its lower grades thousands of our crooks. Prostitution, in
some way or other the basic cause of most murders, is
managed by foreign bullies and largely carried on by
foreign women. Financial swindles of greater or lesser
magnitude embroil hundreds of thousands of decent people,
and they are usually carried out by American or Jewish
organizers. Indeed, it seems to be an axiom of police work
that each nation exports its more troublesome element
overseas in exchange for birds of a similar feather from other
nations. Indeed, it is said in United States police circles
that the biggest gangster on that side of the water, not
even barring A 1 Capone, is a lad who was born and bred
in Liverpool.
However that may be, there is no doubt that our own
immigration laws need a good deal of attention. Politicians
argue that too fine a sieve to keep out the scum of other
REFLECTIONS
197
nations makes us unpopular abroad. Nonsense! We don’t
want to exclude foreigners of decent status who come here
to spend money, but merely the ones who are definitely
suspected by the Yard of coming here with the purpose of
taking British money away with them in a variety of shady
ways. At present we are too inclined to make our country
a haven for all the blackguards and scoundrels whom no
one else will house. Unlike most other lands, we seldom
refuse a landing to a man, no matter what his character may
be, unless he has already openly flouted our laws to an
amazing extent.
We may know that an international crook is coming to
settle down in Hatton Garden, or that a notable French cat-
burglar has taken a flat in Mayfair in the middle of the
season, but unless he has already appeared before our own
courts, we do no more than keep a perfunctory eye on him.
True, if he makes trouble here, we usually know where
to go to find him—his personal chances of escape are
slender—but such men as these are aware of what will
happen, and see to it that the goods they have collected
are already vanished into thin air by the time the official
hand falls on their shoulder. And then, even if a sentence
can be obtained, it is usually worth while, for the profits
are vast for a clever crook.
When we deport a man—and this is never done without
the most extreme justification—then, admittedly, our police
force sees to it that he stays away, and in this particular
we are a long way ahead of any other country I can name.
The deportee is moved out of the country, and all our ports
are warned of his appearance and dossier. If he comes back,
no matter how clever his disguise, no matter how well
faked his passport (and usually such a man promptly changes
his name not necessarily by legal methods when he has
been deported), his chances of slipping through our coastal
TRAITORS WITHIN
198
cordon of police is almost nil. Very few deported criminals
are unwise enough to try a return, but certain drug-running
“ bosses ” do so, with the almost inevitable result that they
make a lengthy acquaintance with the interior of one of our
bigger prisons.
One of the greatest of present police difficulties in con¬
nection with foreign criminals at present is the ease with
which foreign women can get into England. Despite all
precautions all our big ports possess a type of out-of-work
waterside loafer and odd-job criminal the larger part of
whose income is derived from making marriages of con¬
venience with incoming alien women, who thus acquire
their “ husbands’ ” English nationality, and so are far
more difficult to punish.
The system is simple. After corresponding with a
compatriot in this country, a Continental prostitute or
woman crook is told to arrive at a certain port at a certain
day. There she is met by her correspondent, who mean¬
while has picked up from a neighbouring public house one
of the obliging “ husbands.” The three go along to the
nearest registry office, give what notice may be required,
subsequently go through a form of marriage, a twenty-
pound note changes hands, and the woman never sees her
husband again. On the other hand she can always produce
her marriage certificate showing her to be a British national;
and she cannot then be sent out of the country.
The punishment for this form of crime is hard to admin¬
ister, and apt to be negligible anyway. As far as the law
is concerned, it can punish the woman for her misdeeds,
but if she is not an alien it cannot deport her. There is no
requirement at law for a husband and wife to live together
—theoretically if they choose to part at the registrar’s door
they can do so. Unless bigamy can be proved, there is no
case for a serious police prosecution. Consequently, our
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ports are always open to women procurers, prostitutes,
thieves, shop-lifters and all the undesirables of the world,
so long as they can arrange a sham marriage over here on
landing. And even a cursory study of the police news
of any week-end will show how ready foreigners are to
profit from our stupidity.
During my career I had a good deal to do with our
foreign criminal importations. My work in the Special
Branch, dealing with political criminals, spies, secret
societies and so on, naturally took me among them, since
in our political as well as other forms of crime, foreigners
outnumber the home product. It may shock readers to
know that in parts of most of our great cities there are large
areas which I could fairly mark with solid patches of yellow,
black, brown or similar distinctive colours to indicate that
they are populated almost entirely by colonies of foreigners
—and mostly foreign crooks at that! Limehouse, for
instance, would be coloured yellow, to show its Chinamen;
Soho and Clerkenwell speak Italian to such an extent that
it is essential to know Italian to do police work there; the
negroes have their stronghold round Commercial Road;
part of the West End and one part of Liverpool are nearly
as brown as Bombay; Glasgow has its Chinese area into
which white people seldom dare intrude; outside Glasgow,
certain mining districts are solidly populated by Poles and
Letts; and Cardiff numbers many thousands of Arabs
along its waterside.
Scotland Yard has long known all this; the public should
also know it, for it is a menace that threatens our social
peace more alarmingly every year. Crimes go on in some
of these colonies at which our police, newspapers and public
never so much as guess. It is said among sailors who berth
in the Thames (and sailors know even more than policemen
because of their habit of splashing their money about when
200 TRAITORS WITHIN
on shore and so offering easy game for all sorts of crooks)
that there are trapdoors in some of the riverside houses
through which tons of drugs come up and dozens of bodies
go down; that Chinatown, for instance, is ruled by a
judicial system of its own, and one of horrible callous
cruelty and injustice into the bargain; that voodoo rites are
practised by negroes in the heart of the West End of London
that would sicken the soul of the most hardened of our own
murderers. And, even allowing for probable exaggeration,
it is as well to remember that there’s not usually smoke
without some sort of a fire being present, even if it is only
a little one.
There is another and even more serious side to the
question. The United States to-day is suffering from
exactly the complaint we may expect to have in fifty years
time, unless we alter our present immigration laws. Over
there the numbers of the coloured and other imported races
are already—if one counts the people of German, Italian
and Scandinavian stock—outnumbering the pure-bred
Americans. It is serious enough when such a thing hap¬
pens with other white people as the leaven, but that can be
borne, and in time perhaps the whole lump may be said to
have improved. But when coloured races begin to increase
so as to threaten in time to outnumber the white ones,
things take on a more sombre hue. America, at the present
moment, is looking forward anxiously to the future on some
such account; we are nowhere near that state yet, but we
are importing more coloured people every day, we are
making conditions ideal for them here, they are allowed to
practise as teachers, lawyers, doctors even, in our midst,
they possess their own colonies in the centres of our great
ports—in fact, we are not looking forward quite enough.
I am no Yellow Peril fanatic, but merely a man who has
spent a lifetime at Scotland Yard with unusual facilities for
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201
watching the ebb and flow of immigration. I hold my own
views about the undesirability of admitting too many aliens
largely because I have noticed that nearly all foreigners who
come to England marry English men or women, and never
in the whole of my career have I seen such a marriage
improve the English party to it. Moreover, any policeman
will agree with me when I say that the half-breed results
of such marriages, in practically every single case, find their
way sooner or later into the ranks of our criminal classes,
and provide the most vicious and dangerous types among
them. I leave social reform to those more fitted to tackle
it, but I cannot but admit that when colours mix the worst
qualities of both come out every time in the offspring, and
that offspring causes endless trouble to the police and the
community later.
In fairness, I must add that I do not mean to pose as a
Little Englander, or to argue against other nations merely
because they are not my nation. I have met many police
chiefs in Paris, New York and elsewhere, and I have often
talked over this problem with them; and I think I can
fairly say that every policeman, no matterwhat his nationality,
agrees that his country’s trouble comes mostly from
foreigners. Nor is this prejudice; I have seen the dossiers
of English criminals in America who leave the United
States “ lag ” standing for troublesomeness and daring.
It may be perhaps that in a strange country crime offers
the only way to riches for a morally weak and loose-
charactered man or woman. It may be that the itch to
travel goes with criminal tendencies, or that some early
escapade at home makes another country seem desirable.
Whatever it is, the foreign criminal problem seems for all
nations to be a case of rabbits to Australia—they’re not
nearly so bad at home as they are when they get to fresh
fields and pastures new!
CHAPTER II
Secret societies in Great Britain—Ku Klux Klan members here—
Soho’s Italian societies which have their own laws—Chinese
societies in Limehouse.
T O mention secret societies calls to most people’s
minds the name of the Ku Klux Klan, and the
thought is then dismissed with the comfortable
feeling that such things do not affect Great Britain. As a
matter of fact, there are known headquarters of the dreaded
Mafia and Camorra Societies in Soho and Kensington
respectively; there are over a dozen known anarchist societies
who call periodical conclaves in our big towns; an attempt
to murder a Chinese seaman recently was traced to one
of the many Chinese societies of Limehouse; and a very
famous American Ku Klux Klansman was recognized in
London a few weeks ago by an American journalist who
was staying here as the guest of one of our London papers.
As there is black magic and white magic, so there are less
sinister but equally secret societies, each with an enormous
hold on England’s daily life; among them are the Crusaders,
with Princes and Generals among its members; the Masons
and many others.
Everyone is familiar with the high pointed cap and long
robe of the Ku Klux Klan, which is said to have obtained
its name from the sound made by the cocking of a rifle.
Originally formed to check the outrages of coloured
soldiers after the American Civil War, the terrifying garb
was used to strike fear into superstitious hearts. Now the
league opposes all forms of injustice and tyranny in this
202
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203
country as well as in America. Strange stories are told of
white-clad figures riding up to English country houses at
midnight and extracting promises from certain of the
inmates in the name of the Ku Klux authorities, and several
times statements have been made in America that a very
powerful branch of the society operates in England. But
since even America does not know the names of the Klans-
men and their officers, these statements are hard to check.
An interesting story was told to me in this connection a
few weeks ago. A young man of title at Oxford spent a
recent vacation at a big country house which an American
of doubtful repute had leased in Norfolk. At the end of
the holiday, the visitor had lost so much money at various
forms of gambling to his host, who had left America
because of a card-sharping scandal, that the lad was desper¬
ate and threatened to blow his brains out. An American
undergraduate friend of his heard the story, and made him
promise not to do anything at least until the time of grace
which his host had given him to make the payments had
elapsed. Two days before that date he received a formal
letter from his ex-host saying that all his debts had been
paid in full, though the boy himself had not been able to
settle more than a minute proportion of them. On making
enquiries he discovered that the American had shut up the
house and left England for good; and a former valet swore
that his master had been visited at midnight by a posse of
silent horsemen in the Klan uniform who privately inter¬
viewed him and told him that he must immediately leave
this country and never return.
I can speak with the knowledge of personal experience
that the Mafia still exists in a very active form. It is a
Sicilian secret society sworn to a kind of brotherhood of
vengeance on anyone who harms one of its members. In
September 1892, a whole-hearted attempt was made to
TRAITORS WITHIN
204
clear this society out of Italy, where it wielded considerable
political influence. About two hundred of its principal
members were arrested, and numbers of others fled overseas
and founded branches of the league in America and England.
At about this time the New Orleans police made a round-up
of Mafiusi there who were suspected of having taken part
in a wholesale murder of a number of other Italians. The
chief of the New Orleans police was promptly murdered,
and the judges of the arrested men were so terrorized that
most of the latter were liberated.
In Soho to-day there are clubs where members of the
Mafia in London—and they number over a thousand—
meet regularly for secret initiation of new entrants or to
try before their society tribunal members accused of a
crime against the league. Vendettas are faithfully carried
on, though intensive police precautions prevent much actual
violence from taking place in England. There have,
however, during the last four years, been at least two
murders committed which have loosely been attributed to
“ Race Gangs,” but which were apparently carried out by
Italian secret societies in the pursuance of private vendettas
among themselves.
Perhaps the most powerful secret society of to-day is the
Camorra, which operates in almost every civilized country.
As recently as 1900, in a libel suit in Italy, astounding
revelations were made of the power of this league, which
led to the dissolution of the Naples municipality, where the
society had its headquarters, and the appointment of a royal
commissioner. Entry into the Camorra is by an initiation
ceremony at which a mock duel is fought, the initiate’s
arm being deliberately wounded by his opponent. If the
bullet enters the arm in the wrong place, death or permanent
disablement may result, but that is a risk the entrant must
minimize by standing perfectly still to receive the shot.
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People of the highest social rank belong to this society,
and there is said to be a London headquarters. Formerly a
league for levying blackmail and controlling political parties,
the Camorra is now more of a private society, with its
avowed object the sustaining of a high code of family honour
among its members. Novices have to open a vein in their
own arm, dip their fingers in the blood, and swear to give
up life itself if need be at the simple order of the society’s
local chief. The slightest disobedience is punished with
death, carried out by another member, who is drawn by lot.
The Molly Maguires were originally an Irish secret
society, but they rose to power in the United States at the
time of the Civil War, and all their members to-day are
Americans. At the end of last century, they became so
powerful that they caused a general strike of the United
States coal mines. A detective from the famous Pinkerton
Agency was sent among them, joined the order, lived among
them for two years, and became secretary of one of the
most criminally active of all their branches. His evidence,
when he had collected it, led to the imprisonment of most
of the important leaders, and the society’s power was broken
and its members scattered.
Just before the outbreak of war, however, we came
across a Molly Maguire lodge among the miners of Lanca¬
shire; it was much modified in its objects, as is the case of
most secret societies which have lived into this century,
but it kept to all the old rules and formulee of the order.
Since then it has grown and spread, and now the society
numbers several hundreds of members here and in America.
The present efforts of the league appear to be those of
keeping local men in employment wherever a headquarters
is formed, and to some extent intimidating strangers who
seem likely to replace local labour or management.
Limehouse, with its Chinese secret societies, presents
206 TRAITORS WITHIN
the most serious problem in the way of hidden leagues that
our police forces have to face. The Oriental mind is
peculiarly suited to the secrecy and subtility necessary to
spread an effective veil over such activities; and there are
definite reasons why it is to the profit of these societies
to continue to exist along our Thames waterside. Drug¬
running and drug-selling is an enormous and widespread
trade with fantastic profits, and these profits actually supply
the sinews of existence to more than one Chinese league.
Always instinct with a spirit of picturesque imagery
yellow criminals are delighted to band themselves together
under some such title as the League of the Sacred Lily, or
the Fellowship of the Scarlet Dragon. One huge factor
which makes the stamping-out of these societies difficult
to our police is that nearly all their members are confirmed
drug-fiends, and take their wages for work done in the
form of a “ shot ” of cocaine or a pipeful of opium. And
anyone who has had to do with a drug-taker knows that all
sense of truth and morality seems to be absent, and that
there is no reward in the whole world to equal that of the
delicious sensuousness of the chosen drug, and no punish¬
ment in earth or Hell equal to the denial of the craving.
Consequently the miserable wretches who live on very little
else than opium and spirits develop fiendish cunning in
carrying out the various tasks allotted them by the societies
to which they belong, and are ready to commit any crime
to obtain relief in the drug that has been promised them.
Another point is that these Chinese societies usually rule
largely by a fear which the mere fear of legal punishment
can never equal. The coolie who incurs the anger of his
society is haled before some secret tribunal in a Limehouse
cellar, and such tortures are devised for him as cannot be
told in decent print. Every conceivable effort is made to
prevent such things happening, but the police are handi-
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207
capped by the fact that they must work along the known
and trusted lines of British justice, and cannot even threaten
a prisoner in order to extract a little truth from him.
In various of our seaport towns, the most active members
of yellow secret societies are white girls who have married
Chinamen, and have subsequently gone to whatever lengths
their husbands have demanded in order to try to retain
some shred of uncertain affection, or to avoid inconceivably
brutal punishments for refusal. Social workers who read
this book with horror must remember that the Oriental
they see and admire on their infrequent visits to the Cardiff,
Glasgow or London watersides, has specially prepared
himself for the occasion in order to give a nice impression.
Moving among these people as I have done when they have
had no time to prepare the eyewash, and when their abso¬
lutely uncivilized essentials have been showing on the
surface, I have learnt that they can change their outward
appearance as easily as I can change a coat, and that they
will do it whenever any profit is to be gained from such an
alteration.
One cannot expect Easterns to have the same codes of
honour as those which Westerns hold. According to their
own peculiar codes, the yellow people in England’s slums
are strictly honourable. That, indeed, is the source of the
power of their numerous secret societies; that they can tell
to an inch how far to trust each other, and we can never
tell at all. The trouble is that nearly without exception
their hidden leagues are operated directly for the purposes
of crime, and in that way they form one of the biggest
problems in the whole of modern police work.
CHAPTER III
Modern blackmail—The cancer of modern society—All classes
involved—Personal experiences—Police precautions—The public
has the remedy in its own hands.
B Y far the most disturbing factor in the crime records
of this century is the spread of blackmail. Up to
about 1900 this despicable felony was looked upon
askance and practised very little; your Victorian boasted a
stiff upper lip and was a bad person to attempt to bully or
coerce. Moreover, police organization was not then nearly
so perfect as it now is, and the blackmailer was liable to
receive such severe corporal punishment as made him glad
to have escaped with his life. Now, however, private
individuals are afraid to take the law into their own hands
for fear of modern, easily-spreading publicity; world com¬
munications have become so much faster that a man’s
reputation can be marred over half the world in a few
weeks; and the spirit of almost slavish reliance on everyday
conventional order and quiet has so seriously sapped the
will to vigorous resistance that blackmail has grown to be
a cancer threatening the very life of our modern civilization.
“ Anything for a quiet life,” has degenerated into a
universal watchword; but unfortunately the paying of
Danegeld does not lead to a quiet life. More frequently
it leads to hopeless suicide.
Blackmail is generally considered to be confined, as far
as its victims are concerned, to the richer classes. Any
policeman will assure you that the principal sufferers are
really the respectable poorer people. Usually more sincere
208
REFLECTIONS
209
and possessed of deeper feelings, they are also less level¬
headed and more liable to be carried away by an emotion
of the moment. There must be hundreds of thousands of
cases in every one of our big towns to-day in which a
working man or woman is cruelly mulcted of weekly
payments by some false friend who, having once been taken
into confidence concerning some youthful indiscretion, has
ever since used the knowledge as a lever with which to
obtain a regular income. In every grade of life, from
labourers and dustmen to bank clerks and commercial
travellers, from typists to manageresses, from parsons
to bishops and from lance-corporals to generals, the
merciless pursuit goes on, and every week hundreds of
thousands of pounds change hands because of covert threats
or menacing looks.
Let me give a couple of examples which have recently
come to my own notice. A girl factory hand was rescued
a week or two ago, after she had thrown herself into the
Thames. Taken to the nearest police station to give an
account of herself and get into some dry clothes, she cried
bitterly and said that she did not want to be saved. At last
an explanation was forthcoming. A theft of money had
taken place at her factory some weeks earlier, on a day when
she herself had had occasion to go alone to the room from
which the money had disappeared. Next morning, a work
acquaintance had made the suggestion privately to her that
she had taken the money. She indignantly denied having
done so, but the other girl only laughed, and said that,
unless a small share was forthcoming, she would mention
her suspicions to the forewoman. The girl herself weakly
paid what was demanded from her week’s wages, rather
than face a scandal; and after that the blackmail went on
steadily each week. As she had to give her parents a
proportion of her earnings, the result was that she could not
210 TRAITORS WITHIN
afford any midday meal. Finally, between weakness from
hunger and fear of being accused, she tried to commit
suicide. The case was hardly one for the police court,
because the girl herself was pitifully afraid of any publicity,
though the police satisfied themselves absolutely that she
could not have taken any part in the original theft. But
the Sergeant at the station where she was brought had
himself a daughter of about the same age, and personally
undertook the job of having a private talk with the young
blackmailer. It was he who told me the story; and I gather
from what he said that the young criminal he spoke to
will think a long time before she tries that game again.
The other example concerned a highly-placed Church
dignitary—a man whose fifty years of life have been spent
doing good works, and who has the unqualified respect and
affection of everyone who knows him. He lives in a for¬
gotten country town, and comes to London two or three
times a year for clerical conferences. About a year ago,
on one such visit, he saw a girl selling matches in the gutter.
She was holding a baby on one arm, and looked terribly
weary, and the old man put three or four half-crowns into
her hand. The girl looked at them, gasped, and begged
that she might know the name of her kind helper so that,
as she said, she could mention him in her prayers.
Affected by this evidence of Christian spirit, he men¬
tioned his name and stayed talking to her for a few moments.
She told a sad story of betrayal and ruin, and the baby
whimpered an accompaniment. Finally he wrote a few
words of introduction on a sheet from a notebook, gave it
to her, and told her to take it to a brother clergyman in
London who would try to help her. He then went back
to his country home content at having done a kindly deed.
A few days later he received a letter from the girl making
abominable accusations against him and saying that, unless
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211
she received more money, she would publish them in his
parish. Very foolishly, the old man wrote, enclosing a
small amount of money, and saying that he did so out of
pity rather than fear (which was doubtless perfectly true)
and that his idea was only to entreat her to forsake such
wicked ways of gaining money. A little while after, however,
another letter followed; and so cleverly was it worded that
it terrified the old clergyman, who had never had to do with
such situations, into sending the amount then demanded.
The blackmail went on for months, and was only dis¬
covered because his wife heard him muttering about it in
his sleep, for his nerves had broken down badly as a result
of the worry. She, being a practical woman, made him tell
her all about it; and then put a private detective on to the
matter. This man, who is a professional acquaintance of
mine and an old Yard officer, discovered some interesting
facts. In the first place, the girl hired the baby from a
neighbour, and pinched it to make it cry when benevolent-
looking people were passing her “ pitch.” She found that
it added to her income, which was generally something like
six pounds a week. She had found the clergyman’s address
from a Clerical Directory, and had tried blackmail as a
sideline. So successful had it proved that latterly she had
abandoned her gutter work, and lived like a lady of means,
doing no work. Regrettably enough, the old man was still
too charitable to make a public case of it; so the matter
was privately settled. He had lost his money, but he
regained his peace of mind, and he knows what to do
should such a thing occur again.
The greatest safeguard of blackmail in this country is
that the blackmailed are so very averse to bringing a public
case. It is not even now universally known that, no matter
what the details of the case, a court will always suppress the
name of the person who is suffering from blackmail or
212 TRAITORS WITHIN
threats of it. English law does not presume to judge
litigants’ morals or past misdeeds, but contents itself with
the prevention of the actual blackmail attempt. Even if
details of a former breach of the law are brought into court
during the case, they will be suppressed from newspaper
publication and they are practically never used by the police
or legal authorities to embarrass the blackmailed. For the
time being, the law has only one concern, and that is to
safeguard the rights of the private citizen against any form
of coercion or pressure.
The most severe punishment allowed by legal statutes
is always given in such cases to the blackmailer because it
is a byword at law that, for one such matter brought into
court twenty are suffered in silence, and an effort is made,
by punishing one offender with harshness, to discourage
the others. There is only one treatment for any attempt to
blackmail, no matter what the subject of the threat, and
that is to communicate with the police at once. No pay¬
ments should be made, no promises given, and no time
wasted. Official instructions are that, in such a case, not
even the nearest relatives of the sufferer shall be allowed to
obtain knowledge of what is going on, or that the police
have been informed. No publicity of any kind will be
given then or afterwards, and every desire for secrecy can
be complied with so long as it is within reasonable and
possible limits. In any case, a talk with the nearest police
officer commits the blackmailed to nothing, and will
certainly enlighten him as to how far he can safely proceed
in self-defence. So long as definite blackmail is being
attempted, the law in this one case is prejudiced—it is
ready to be all on the side of the blackmailed and utterly
against his persecutor. If only that could be widely under¬
stood, the menace of blackmail would shrink; as things
are to-day it is spreading so that about one person in every
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213
thirty in our population is menaced by it. The public has
the remedy in its own hands.
A considerable number of suicides and not a few murders
each year are caused by this beastly form of crime. It is
often realized by the police officers investigating a prosti¬
tute’s murder that the miserable woman has threatened to
betray some lover whose fear for his good name prompts
him to run the risk even of the Black Cap. Not even the
Royal houses of Continental Europe are free from the
shadow of the blackmailer; the higher a man’s position or
the more universally respected his character, the more
obvious a target does he offer to those who see easy money
in the job of threatening him.
One Royal house was recently greatly concerned because,
after the death of a minor member, certain persons wrote
saying that the dead man had been indiscreet and had left
letters and presents in a quarter where they should certainly
not have been. Passages were quoted from the letters
which, had they been published, might have caused very
grave disturbances throughout the country, even possibly
ending in a revolution.
A famous ex-Scotland Yard man, used to political work,
was engaged in the task of settling the affair. He was told
that, if the letters were genuine, they must be bought back
at any price. But they were not genuine—they were
cleverly forged. The persons who held them were promptly
arrested, and the forgery proved beyond all doubt. The
offenders are still in a foreign prison, and are likely to
remain there for a long time to come.
This form of post-mortem blackmail is alarmingly on
the increase. It has been discovered that people who might
be hard to blackmail in their own interests will go to almost
any lengths to protect the name of a dead friend or relative,
and they are less critical of the matter for which the money
TRAITORS WITHIN
214
is demanded. Yet, nine times out of ten, such things are
the most obvious forgeries or swindles; there again the only
way is to go immediately to the police and trust to their
discretion to settle the matter without fuss. Everyone
should realize that, from the legal viewpoint, the only
crime is in trying to extort money; the law will see to it
that the documents in question are returned or destroyed,
and that the menace is removed without anyone knowing
what has happened with the exception of the blackmailed
and his or her oppressor.
Recently a new type of blackmail has arisen. Clever
advertisements are inserted in newspapers which say
discreetly that the advertisers can secretly rid victims of
the menace of blackmail. Unfortunates who reply to
such advertisements are told that the only way is to have
the incriminating documents stolen back again, and offer
to carry out such work for a high fee. Once the fee is
paid, however, they either extort more on the ground that
they, too, know the secret, or else on the ground that the
victim has tried to incite them to crime! This sounds too
simple a ruse to work, but several times during the last
twelve months the police have come across traces of such
efforts. The fact is that, when a man or woman is crazed
with the fear of blackmail, any payment, however pre¬
posterous, is agreed to, and any threat, however absurd, is
feared. Unfortunately, the police—who are the only
people who are not out for private gain in such an affair—
are also the only ones who are instinctively mistrusted.
CHAPTER IV
Society criminals—Youths and girls who try crime for the sake of a
thrill—Spongers; card-sharps; robbers—Varsity girl criminals
—Police difficulties in society—Night clubs.
T HIS is a branch of crime in which serious outbreaks
are sporadic only, but a number of factors combine
to make effective police precautions exceedingly
difficult. In the first place the motive for crime in society
people is nearly always obscure, and consequently it cannot
be anticipated. In the case of such felonies as smash-and-
grab raids, bank thefts and even murders, the motive is
obvious in many cases before anything desperate is
attempted; it is perfectly true to say that for every murder
committed two are prevented by previous police action.
But since practically all society criminals are interested
in the psychological thrill of the crime they commit much
more than in its tangible results, there is no warning until
the thing has happened. The two young millionaires who
murdered a boy in America a year or two ago were looked
at askance as mental lepers by the whole world when they
said they had planned the outrage in order to discover a
new sensation; but the same desire has caused most of our
famous society swindling, robbing, embezzlement and
similar scandals during the last twenty years.
To a considerable degree, of course, this has resulted
from the general fraying of nerves that occurred during
the war years. The lower and middle classes, always more
steady and less nervous, found peace all the panacea they
required, but the more highly-strung members of upper
215
216 TRAITORS WITHIN
society developed an unhealthy appetite for excitement
which will not get back to normal again for a decade or two
yet. There is a general opinion that to attribute shop¬
lifting in a society girl to kleptomania and in a slum girl
to an instinct for thieving is unfair; but kleptomania is a
definite disease recognized instantly by the medical pro¬
fession, and it and some form or another of shell-shock
have been responsible for almost continual society crime
outbreaks since 1918. It is a pity that, when the nation’s
nerves have become unsettled, the police force has the
difficult task of steadying them again, but there seems no
other way out of the difficulty.
Especially in young society people to-day is there an
inordinate desire for novelty and thrill. There is a club
in a Midland university whose initiation ceremony is the
committing of some mild form of excess such as capturing
a policeman’s helmet; among certain sections of what are
commonly termed the Bright Young People all sorts of
legal offences, some mere high spirits and some candidly
disgusting, are committed, and even staid society bachelors
and dowagers are not free from the taint. The trouble is
that post-war society, whose only criterion is the rattle of a
pocketful of silver, is inextricably riddled with bounders,
cads and opportunists who live by their wits, and who are
always ready, by means of blackmail or persuasion, to force
an unfortunate who has once descended to even a mild
crime, to go deeper into the mire. A man who has lent
his title to one doubtful prospectus, a girl who for excite¬
ment has attended a club of ill-repute or a boy who has
gambled beyond his means is usually only too ready to try
to extricate himself or herself from veiled threats by doing
something far more compromising at the suggestion of the
“ villain of the piece.”
There are thousands of men and girls in Mayfair and
REFLECTIONS
217
Belgravia as well as in Deauville and Monte Carlo who
never do a stroke of work in their lives, have no obvious
means of support, but who dress well, never seem short of
money and move in what used to be quite exclusive circles.
They are the spongers; as definite and difficult a body of
criminals as any we have in the land. They scrape an
acquaintance with anyone of the opposite sex who has
money and a reputation; usually they can dance well, are
amusing company, and are charmingly cosmopolitan. Give
them the shadow of a chance and they will engineer some
sort of compromising situation and thereafter live fatly on
the proceeds. They are not blackmailers in the true sense
of the word; a small show of opposition will send them
elsewhere, and they make no precise demands; they merely
live on other people’s hospitality in much the same way as
won’t-works live on the Dole—as if it were their right.
They will force a marriage of convenience for themselves
if such a thing is possible, looking on marriage as a ladder
up which they can climb, and of which divorce supplies
the various rungs. If no other way of levying their “ taxes ”
occurs to them, they will put on their shabbiest suit and
turn up uninvited at some important ceremony which is
being run by an ex-friend; he then has the choice of “ lending
them ” enough to take to Savile Row or else of having them
acting a very efficient skeleton at the feast. It sounds a
precarious existence, but I have known cases of this sort
who made a bigger annual income, counting all sources,
than I did during my police career. The only requirements
are a charming presence and an absolute absence of shame.
Such people are usually marvellous card players and
billiard players, and augment their incomes by playing
Varsity friends for stakes up to a pound a point. Also,
they bet a good deal on horses, sometimes with bookmakers
who don’t exist in reality. But they are always careful of
218 TRAITORS WITHIN
the real card-sharps who occur in society, and who number
in their ranks a few persons of title and importance. These
latter are tolerated in much the same way as are the klepto¬
maniacs; so long as a person is interesting or ornamental,
society is willing that he shall occasionally empty its cup¬
boards or its pockets.
No, I am not exaggerating. Two months ago a foreign
count took quarters in a big West End hotel, and his
charming manners and obvious aristocracy soon gathered
around him some of the best-filled purses among the
nouveau riches. At his trial, which took place shortly
afterwards, he admitted to having made £ 2,000 in six
weeks by card-sharping, and having collected sometimes
as much as £500 in one evening from confidence tricks.
He had also borrowed to an extent which must have caused
quite a little sensation when it was discovered that the
money went straight out of England, and that he never
intended to pay any of it back.
Actual robberies in society circles are usually carried
out by girls whose pretty faces have taken them on to the
fringe of society as hostesses, secretaries or in some other
capacity. Here the motive—need for more money—is
obvious, and consequently the criminals are easier to trace.
But, as they usually possess considerable good looks and
are very ready to trade on the susceptibilities of their former
male associates, even though guilt may be traced to them
it is often quite another matter to inflict any punishment.
A few crocodile tears and a flashing smile seem to have
much more effect on society men than they would have on
people of harder grain; and in my own experience it hap¬
pened two or three times that a proved criminal was forgiven
by the very person whom she had robbed (and whom she
doubtless would rob again), and the victim refused to lodge
a complaint out of a sort of twisted and misguided chivalry!
REFLECTIONS
219
These girls, who have the access to rooms where valuable
jewels and ornaments may be lying about, are more often
than not quite ready to use both jewels and chivalry, so that
all sorts of unexpected snags are put in the way of the
police who try to discover the author of such a robbery.
One of the biggest sources of crime in the more educated
classes is that the spread of education has made it a common
thing for a man or girl who, fifty years ago, would have
been content to hold a business or professional position,
to get the fatal feeling that work is not good enough for
them, and that they can live just as comfortably in society.
Varsity girls with brilliant educational records have on
more than one occasion recently, stated in court that they
came definitely to the conclusion that they could make more
of an income in crime than in business, and that they made
their choice with their eyes wide open. I naturally don’t
mean that society and crime are analagous; but for the girl
of talent and knowledge, society is the broad highway to
the shadier sort of success.
Perhaps the most fruitful source of police trouble in
connection with the upper classes is to be found in what are
broadly termed night clubs. Not more than fifty per cent,
of these institutions are really night clubs according to the
old rendering of the term; some of them do not operate
after dark at all. But nearly all of them sell drink at for¬
bidden hours, and many of them sell wines which have
paid no duty; a number are used for gambling, while others
evade the amusement tax on cabaret shows; and a good many
are run for no other purpose than to make money from
various candidly immoral sources.
Some are little better than brothels. One such was
raided recently, and a good deal of complaint was made
because the police officers who discovered it went there in
plain clothes to obtain evidence. There is no other way
220 TRAITORS WITHIN
in which evidence can be got! Is it sensible to suppose
that police in full uniform should walk solemnly into the
club ? These places always have as many emergency exits
as a rabbit-hole, and their members are always ready to
evacuate the premises.
There are, of course, a number of night clubs which are
perfectly innocent in their behaviour. These I am not
immediately concerned with, since they give no trouble
to the police. But every well-to-do young man and woman
in London and a vast number of students who are neither
well-to-do nor stable, know the whereabouts of clubs which
exist in momentary fear of a police raid. They are fre¬
quented by these young people merely out of a desire to
boast of having been there; but their habitues are rich
abnormals, prostitutes and all the riff-raff of society, and
many of the cabaret shows given at such places are so
indecent that they would never be tolerated for a moment
by right-minded people.
Certain notorious society people constantly appear in
court for offences in connection with night clubs, and their
punishments are absurdly light. It is ridiculous to say that
there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, but
in this one particular it is painfully obvious that the rich
may flout the law to their heart’s content with no heavier
reproof than an occasional fine whose amount is absolutely
nominal compared with the profits they make. It pays
them handsomely to break the law again and again; a poor
man generally goes to prison for a long spell at his third
offence. The situation is manifestly unfair; it is high time
that laws in connection with night clubs should be increased
in severity out of all knowledge.
CHAPTER V
Drugs in England—How they are run in—The quickest way to get
rich—Adventures with the dope smugglers—Suburbs reeking
with cocaine—Careless doctors; inequalities of drug laws.
I N the heart of Dockland there are a number of tall,
blank-looking houses where the worst criminals in the
world are bred. The fronts are blind and grimy; the
backs perhaps look out across the oily Thames. To the
doors of these houses, when dusk falls, lurching, drunken
figures creep, and pull at a bell-handle; the echoes answer
with a cracked jangle at the back of the house. The door
noiselessly opens, the newcomers creep through, and the
door shuts furtively. Inside, the visitors stumble along a
black passage, down stone steps into what seems to be a
cellar; then through a hidden door, up other steps, and into
a room, hazy with sickly smoke, lighted by paper lanterns,
and with long divans round the walls. There, with a sob
of attainment, the newcomers collapse on to vacant divans;
one or two vague figures grunt or moan; crackling notes
change hands; silent-footed attendants approach with long
pipes; someone screams hoarsely; then all is silent again.
The House of Dreams. . . .
Another picture. A respectable little red-brick villa
in Tooting or Wandsworth, standing in prim complacency
over its tiny front garden. The man who has just pressed
the electric bell might be a respectable commercial trraveller,
though if a Yard man saw him there, he would be run to
the cells with an anger only with difficulty restrained from
violence. The door opens so speedily that it seems that
22 I
222 TRAITORS WITHIN
the occupant of the house must have been waiting just
inside; a small packet changes hands, and is paid for in
notes, and the man goes quickly away as the door closes.
Inside, a haggard-faced woman opening with trembling
fingers the tiny package, takes therefrom a minute pinch
of white powder, which she sniffs with the epicurean satis¬
faction of an old snuff-taker; the rest is tucked inside
her blouse, and she stretches drowsily on the small, neat
settee. The only sound is of the important little clock on
the mantelpiece and the woman’s rather stertorious breathing.
She is an unpleasant sight, but she is too sodden in hectic
dreams to care; cocaine has robbed her of her self-respect.
For twenty-four hours out of every twenty-four, the
police force is fighting to try to obliterate those ghastly
pictures from our national life. But until the present laws
concerning the supplying of drugs are made altogether
more strict, all the slogging in the world from the mere
policeman and detective won’t help matters. For the
position at present is a deadlock. The plain fact is that the
profits on drug-running are such that any man or woman
who has no moral distaste of the job finds it a tremendously
paying proposition to flout the law, and discount whatever
fines and terms of imprisonment may result as an ordinary
business debit. A successful drug-runner on a big scale
can easily make a profit of £2,000 in a single month, and
can—if he is not prevented by imprisonment—become a
millionaire in a few years. No fines that can at present be
imposed can do more than nibble at his profits; and im¬
prisonment, if his organization is perfected first, is nothing
more than a temporary inconvenience. In my opinion and
in the opinion of every experienced detective officer in the
force, there should be only two forms of punishment for
taking part in any way in drug-running; they are a life-
sentence and the cat-o’-nine-tails.
REFLECTIONS
223
Make no mistake; drug-taking is a spreading habit.
The restrictions which prevent a chemist from selling
cocaine or opium are added to each year. But the chemist
is the last man on earth who would so far injure his reputa¬
tion as to do such a thing; meanwhile the Orientals along
the docksides and their agents in suburb and city success¬
fully smuggle tons of cocaine and hundredweights of opium
into this country every year. It is not much more difficult
to find out where to get a “ shot ” of cocaine than to draw
a ticket in the Irish Sweep; every respectable London district
numbers confirmed drug-takers among its best society.
The real dope kings, of whom Brilliant Chang is a
notorious example, whose name may not be unfamiliar to my
readers, do not usually operate personally in this country.
They live in a port like Alexandria or Bombay where a big
native population provides at once a sanctuary and an army
of helpers, and their orders are conveyed to England by
native seamen who are paid for their services by free supplies
of their favourite drug. Their principal lieutenants are
usually Orientals in London, Cardiff or Liverpool.
In the holds of unseaworthy tramps, deep hidden beneath
a legitimate cargo, or possibly ingeniously concealed in the
very heart of something obvious like a piece of timber, the
drugs are smuggled in. I have known drugs to be pressed
into indigestion tablet form and sent, one crate in every
seven being packed with them, among a consignment of
tablets identical in appearance but composed in the rest of
the crates of bismuth and chalk. I was once examining a
suspected vessel in the Pool, and after raking over her cargo
in vain for an hour, noticed a knot in the woodwork of a
bulkhead. That knot I removed with my pocket-knife
because its edges were scratched, and inside were packets
of belladonna. The stuff is so valuable that a matchbox full
of concentrated cocaine or morphia would bring in about
TRAITORS WITHIN
224
£350 pounds profit, and a Customs official I knew once
found some morphia packed inside a consignment of
artificial eyes, one of which he accidentally smashed when it
slipped from his fingers as he was examining it.
During a raid I made just before I retired from the
Force, I called at the luxurious Kensington home of a rich
Hindu, and I was promptly threatened in the man’s silky
treble voice. “ I assure you, Inspector, that this will be
reported in the proper quarters. I believe that the police
constantly make these mistakes, do they not ? And occasion¬
ally policemen are dismissed for showing too much zeal ?
Such a pity! ”
He sang to another tune before I had finished. One of
his boot-heels was a shade higher than the other, and he
was very venomous when I mentioned the fact. At first
he refused to listen to a suggestion that he should let me
examine it, but that at least I did not have to suffer in
silence. The heel sounded dully hollow when I tapped it.
I could not unscrew it, but I risked cutting it very carefully,
and inside was a quantity of white and very bitter powder!
In completing my search I found an exquisitely-carved
Eastern table, in a crack of the legs of which was a speck
of white dust. One of the legs unscrewed (the reverse
way from a usual screw, though) and was also hollow and
filled with cocaine, in this case the powdered-down variety
which is usually sold.
Drugs are hidden in the backs of watches, in eau de
Cologne bottles, in baby-powder tins, false-bottomed
trunks, fountain-pens—in fact in any conceivable hollow.
Sometimes it is sunk in a waterproof bale in a marked spot,
and fetched after nightfall by furtive men in boats, pulling
muffled oars. There have been two attempts to bring in
opium by air via Croydon liners, both of which Customs
officials discovered.
REFLECTIONS
225
Such enormous wages can be paid to all employed in
the drug-traffic that it is quite easy to find men of a certain
ability and even education who will undertake the task of
distributing the drugs all over our great cities. Drug
addicts are numbered among tradesmen’s wives, City
business men, society girls, and also to a lesser extent among
that very much to be pitied class who have suffered some
nervous trouble or illness and who took to drugs in the first
place as a cure for jangled minds. The tragedy of the
business is that drug-taking causes a depraved mental state
in which the addict’s chief joy is to introduce someone else
to the fatal stuff; that is how the traffic spreads. I would
like to implore anyone and everyone who may read this
book never to touch any narcotic drug, no matter what the
temptation, except under the orders of a qualified medical
man. I have had a long life of police work, and I know
that no torture on earth can approach the torture of the
confirmed drug-taker, and also that it is impossible to pre¬
vent the growth of the habit once it is commenced. It
poisons body, brain and soul; an addict is no better than
the lowest brute beast, and cure is very difficult and costly.
Doctors who are careless in prescribing narcotics have a
great deal to answer for in the way of spreading the drug
habit. Every year, two or three doctors appear in various
police courts to answer charges of having carelessly or even
deliberately supplied dangerous quantities of cocaine or
morphia to patients who have developed a craving for such
things. The laws concerning dangerous drugs, almost
repressively curbing where chemists and shopkeepers are
concerned, are lamentably loose in the cases of doctors
dispensing their own prescriptions, and even as regards
veterinary surgeons who need narcotics for use on animals.
The whole legal system about drugs and drug-running
needs tightening up, or better still, renewing altogether.
226 TRAITORS WITHIN
The whole difficulty at present lies not in the detection of
cases of illicit drug-taking or supplying but in the inadequate
punishments awarded for a crime which I and most others
who have had to do with it consider as the equal of cold¬
blooded and wilful murder.
In the work of prevention, detectives willingly spend days
disguised as drink-sodden seamen in the lowest parts of
our seaports, they frequent low beer-shops, or patrol for
days and nights on end in streets where there is always the
chance of a knife in the back. A drug maniac will commit
any crime if he fears that his one source of pleasure in life
is being threatened, and many a murderous attack has been
made on a detective engaged in trying to stop the illicit
drug traffic.
There is a personal and almost a vindictive feeling
throughout the police force against those who engage in
drug-smuggling. The trade is so inhuman, so horrible,
so utterly callous that its participants are almost worse
than murderers. For the sake of a pocketful of notes, they
destroy happiness, health, love, home-life, honour, sanity,
even life itself, and not by a single quick, passionate blow,
but by slow, torturing, maddening, calculated efforts.
There is a universal instinct among policemen and detectives
that the only way to make the traffickers feel for their sins
is to inflict corporal punishment upon them. This cannot
be done at present, although a lot of absolute nonsense is
talked by those who know nothing about it concerning
“ brutalities ” to prisoners in police cells. But if ever the
“ cat ” is permitted to be awarded to drug-runners, the
police will, I believe, use it in a way which will stamp out
the illicit dope trade within a couple of years. That, at
least, is what all of us feel about it now.
CHAPTER VI
Prostitution to-day—An increasing source of crime—How it could
be stopped—White slavery an actual peril—Women criminals
the worst.
M ODERN prostitution is the biggest blot on
modern Western civilization. We who boast
of our progress have permitted conditions in
this particular to grow worse every year; there is more
prostitution practised now than there has ever been in the
previous history of our country. The police are not to
blame; here again our law needs sweeping revision. The
present system makes it almost impossible for a policeman
to bring a successful case against a prostitute unless she
plies her trade in a public street where independent evidence
can be called. Our parks are deliberately left open every
night, and in them it is impossible to find evidence with
which to convict the thousands of women who earn money
there; every adult knows perfectly well that the number
of vagrants who use the parks as a sleeping-place may be
numbered in a few dozens per night, whereas in Hyde Park
hundreds of obvious prostitutes pass the gates every night.
The parks must all be shut at sundown; the legal punish¬
ments for prostitution must be increased till they are on a
par with the present punishments for procuration; and
the fullest publicity must be given to the names and
addresses of all men and women concerned in the loath¬
some trade. Until these three things are done, prostitution
will go on growing and spreading, disease and death will
percolate through the whole of our population, and our
227
228 TRAITORS WITHIN
most fashionable thoroughfares will remain as full of obvious
harlots as any filthy Eastern street.
Fifty per cent, of crime comes back in one way or another
to prostitution as its source. Young men are blackmailed
for money by harpies with no reputations to lose; old men
develop a sort of madness to satiate which they must spend
more and more on the whores with whom they consort;
jealousy because a woman is too lavish with her charms
causes murder after murder; the brothers, fathers and lovers
of young girls murder to revenge themselves on old liber¬
tines; venereal disease causes thousands of suicides every
year; innumerable children die as a result of contamination
by it, and family life breaks down as a result in horrible
recriminations. Lewd displays are offered in most of our
big towns to satisfy unnatural moral appetites; brothels
are run wherever it is safe to found them; slum children are
more or less driven out on to the streets to bring in money
from men; incest and assault are terribly rife all over
Great Britain; sexual maniacs commit nearly half our total
of murders each year. It is a scarifying list!
At this period of enlightenment by education, casual
prostitution resulting in the widespread knowledge of birth
control methods is enormously on the increase. The sway
of fear which at one time was wielded by various religious
bodies has almost entirely vanished; since the War taxation
and new teachings together have made marriage less
popular; and it has naturally happened that hundreds of
thousands of young people who formerly were held back
from non-marital relations by fear of consequences have
now discovered that their particular objection has been
removed. The tightness of moral fibre of Victorian times
was not, in all its results, at all a good thing, but it has
been succeeded by a laxity which (from a police viewpoint,
anyway) is infinitely worse. Every Londoner knows that
REFLECTIONS
229
Piccadilly, Bond Street, and the whole of the West End is
occupied at nights by harlots publicly offering themselves
for sale; and unless innumerable police are employed to
patrol every few yards of pavement, that state of things
will not improve.
Precautions at present exercised to prevent the arrest
of innocent people on a charge of prostitution are far too
severe. Innocent people can quite easily see to it that they
do not loiter along streets after dark, and stare invitingly
into the faces of passers-by. They have only to walk
smartly to avoid all suspicion. In fact, not more than one
or two people are wrongfully arrested on prostitution
charges in the whole of the British Isles every year. Under
our present laws a number are able to get an innocent
verdict in a court, but they only do so by using the laws
about independent evidence to their own advantage, and
by practising their vamping arts by showing a tearful
face to the jurors. So long as the present laws remain, it is
often a grave risk for an officer to make a perfectly justifiable
arrest which in all probability will bring him judicial and
newspaper censure as a result. It is the laws that are at
fault, and the laws must be tightened up.
I would like to see prostitution become an offence for
which foreign women could be deported on the first con¬
viction. About seventy per cent, of London’s prostitutes
are Germans, Frenchwomen or Scandinavians; and nearly
all the bullies who “ farm ” them are foreigners. Practic¬
ally no prostitutes in this country (except occasional amateurs)
work for their own profit. Nearly all of them faithfully
hand over the wages they earn to men who control them as
a managing director controls a business. If we could
deport the women and flog the men (though most police
officers would rather see the latter hanged!) we should clean
our big towns almost entirely in a year.
TRAITORS WITHIN
230
These men are usually connected with the white slave
traffic. A good deal has been written lately about the
“ myth ” of white slavery, and one or two provincial
policemen have said that no such thing exists. That, of
course, is nonsense. Any experienced detective or police
officer will assure you—with records of hundreds of cases
to point his arguments—that England is one of the richest
hunting-grounds of the white slaver. If weightier evidence
is needed, turn over the pages of the report of the special
commission set up by the League of Nations to enquire
into the problem. Actual figures and sworn statements
are given there, taken from reliable police and other sources;
it is definitely clear that hundreds of girls every year are
spirited out of Great Britain alone to feed the brothels of
South America, Germany and France.
The difficulty is to put a stop to the traffic. It is per¬
fectly true to say that violence is not used nowadays to
kidnap and carry girls abroad; and the only reason for the
lack of it is that we have instituted the “ cat ” as punish¬
ment. That shows how much this form of retribution is
feared. The first step is nearly always seduction, or even
a glittering marriage. Impressionable young girls are
promised all sorts of fineries by foreign—often coloured—
agents; mock titles are often flaunted before their eyes;
they are taken for jaunts in a showy car; money is spent
freely on them. Then they are either persuaded to go
abroad voluntarily as mistress to their seducer, or else are
inveigled into going through a form of marriage with him.
The latter may be a recognized foreign form (though the
man may have been married under other names dozens of
times before for similar purposes), or it may be a sheer
swindle proferred under the name of some sort of foreign
marriage. Slum parents are often only too ready to put
pressure on their daughters to marry coloured men who
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231
are willing to pay for a new house for the parents—my
experience goes to show me that this sort of buying and
selling is carried on in England as unashamedly as it is in
Bombay or Singapore or Hong-Kong.
Once the misguided girls are out of the reach of British
law, their real position is explained to them. If necessary,
they are more or less tortured until they agree to work in a
brothel, but most of them, seeing only a choice between
starvation and fine clothes, excitement and money, are
willing enough victims. It must be remembered that, to
a girl whose only livelihood in England offers slogging
work in a factory, miserable poverty and slum squalor, not
much persuasion is necessary when the obvious gains of
prostitution or white slavery are offered in exchange.
The girls themselves are the biggest obstacle to effective
police prevention of white slaving. Time after time, I
have stood at a pier-head and taken an opportunity to ask
a girl who is going abroad a ship in company with an
obvious slaver whether she will not think things over
before committing herself. And time after time I have
received a saucy or sneering reply to the effect that my
interference was not desired. The trouble is that if these
girls go voluntarily and if no actual assault or procuration
in connection with an English brothel can be proved, no
police action can be taken against the slavers.
The profits of the trade are so enormous that our present
penalties, easily avoidable as they are, form no obstacle
to the amassing of a vast fortune from the sale of English
girls abroad. Particularly in South America and in the
Far East are they in demand; from £200 to £500 down is
paid for one pretty girl by the brothel-keepers in those
places. As travelling expenses are the only things to be
entered on the debit side, and no time is wasted in the
work, it is possible for an agent to make several thousands
TRAITORS WITHIN
232
of pounds a year clear profit. And he runs no risk whatever
so long as he keeps to methods of persuasion, or uses faked
marriage ceremonies said to belong to some fancy religion
of his own.
The most active agents in the trade are young Indians
and depraved white women. The latter, who have usually
been prostitutes themselves and have since turned to the
more profitable business of running foreign brothels, are
incredibly cunning in their methods, and commit no crime
whatever according to our laws when they persuade young
girls to go abroad with them for immoral purposes. Know¬
ing their own sex, they are able to use fiendishly clever
arguments, and to dangle golden inducements before the
eyes of doubters. These women think nothing of making
a advance in “ wages ” to a victim, and they promise
anything the latter seems to desire, never meaning to keep
their promises. In the end, they pick up a number of girls,
recruited perhaps from the ranks of young amateur prosti¬
tutes, discontented factory girls and country domestic
servants. These they give some sort of quick superficial
training in dancing and singing, with the avowed object of
taking them abroad to join foreign film companies or stage
shows. Often, they deceive the girls themselves as to their
real destination; always there are business-like looking
contracts to sign and not infrequently expensive clothes
to buy, which are supplied by the woman procurer in order
that she may have a further hold on her victims. One such
trip with a dozen girls might clear a profit of three or four
thousand pounds; and after it the criminal keeps away for
a year or two while she spends her money, or perhaps while
collecting girls from another country.
In white slavery as in prostitution in general, the only
cure is to tighten our laws, make deportation easier and
punishments heavier. In the whole of modern police work,
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there is no more difficult crime to bring home to its perpe¬
trators, and none which is carried on with more flagrant
daring. Parents should make the very strictest enquiries
before letting their children go abroad in any capacity
whatever, and they should be extremely careful of encour¬
aging the attentions of coloured suitors to their daughters’
hands. Obviously, all coloured people are not criminals,
but they all have ideas of morality, decency and marriage
which are fundamentally different from British ideas. To
nearly all coloured people, women are chattels of less
importance than cattle; and any promises they may make
as regards women are not to be relied upon.
There are to-day thousands of English girls in brothels,
slums, harems and gutters abroad who could endorse
in tears every word I have said about prostitution and white
slaving. Nearer home, there are such authorities as the
Encyclopedia Britannica, the League of Nations, and all
the responsible police officers of the country. The problem
is one which shows no promise of real legal improvement
for years to come; the only thing that remains is for private
precaution to be brought to the highest possible pitch. And
in this case, as in the case of blackmail, the slogan—“ If
you don’t know, ask a policeman ” is the only safe one to
adopt. The police will tell you immediately whether an
alien is to be trusted and whether doubtful marriage
ceremonies are legal. By finding out such things, you
may save yourself a world of heartbreak and someone else
a whole life in Hell.
CHAPTER VII
Modern murderers, and their methods—The death penalty the only
safeguard—What murderers say about it—Too much leniency
dangerous for the public—The Black Cap.
T HE modern murderer is a new type which has
evolved directly from changing conditions. Until
the beginning of this century, murder was com¬
mitted almost entirely by a low, villainous, brutal kind of
man whose temper, always verging on apoplexy, was bound
to cause him to kill someone in the long run. This type
supplies about five per cent, of our murderers of to-day;
five per cent, are people who expect, like Rouse in the
famous burnt motor-car case, to get money from their
crime, either insurance or otherwise; ten per cent, are
thieves of one sort or another who kill when they mean
only to disable someone who has interfered with them;
thirty per cent, are libertines who want to knock off the
unwanted end of the eternal triangle; and the remaining
fifty per cent, are sexual maniacs. Of all these, the last-
mentioned type is the most dangerous to the community.
The others are almost bound to pay the penalty for their
crimes, but the sexual lunatic is usually a normal business
man, probably a respected husband and kind father, and
possibly enough a popular figure among his acquaintances.
Only in moments of mental storm is he liable to commit
a crime; he is a sort of Jekyll and Hyde whose own mental
sufferings are intense beyond description. Such people
should be confined in mental homes long before they get
to the stage of committing murder; any competent doctor
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235
can tell on examination whether such mental trouble is
present, and advise what should be done for it.
When a murder is committed, the thing that above all
others spoils the chances of discovering the trail of the
murderer is that inquisitive persons crowd around the
body. It should be left untouched, and its immediate
neighbourhood should be kept clear of trespassers. I have
known colleagues of mine who would not miss so small
a clue as a single hair come back furious from investigating
a murder case and say that the murderer had gained a
hundred-to-one chance merely because footprints, finger¬
prints and everything else had been obscured by the
crowding and mauling of morbid lookers-on, before the
police were warned at all. Last December a man was sent
to the scaffold because of the discovery of a single burnt
match, trodden into the mud near a murdered body. Had
the match been sunk another quarter-inch into the earth
by the careless foot of the spectator who trampled on it,
that murderer might have got off scot free.
The methods of modern murderers, clever as they are,
become more futile every day as means of deceiving the
police and detective forces. Modern chemistry has been
brought to such a pitch that no poison can be administered
without proclaiming its presence in the murdered body.
Analysis in the laboratory, of which I shall speak in detail
in my next chapter, can distinguish between human hair
and animal hair, can tell from the dust in a man’s pockets
where he has been in the last twelve hours, can use the
soles of his boots, the napp of his hat and the very surface
of his clothes in the search for evidence which may hang
or liberate him. Each month that goes by sees new
discoveries in the science of analysis by chemical reagents;
these things admit of no error and are controlled by no
human element of doubt; they produce evidence on which
436 TRAITORS WITHIN
a jury can make an unqualified decision. Meanwhile
police organization is improving and spreading, and the
public is being educated to co-operate sensibly with the
police force. Your modern murderer has usually about one
chance in a thousand of getting away unsuspected, and
perhaps one in eight hundred of saving his neck.
The latter chance, however, is speedily improving,
owing to the efforts of a number of weak-minded persons,
mostly clergymen and old maiden ladies, who make a
constant agitation in and out of Parliament for the abolition
of the death penalty. As far as one can make out, they
would as readily pity the cucumber the tortures of the
salad, if only someone would start a league to prevent that
cruelty. The shadow of the rope is the greatest safeguard
of life and quiet in the whole of our civilization.
I have myself come into contact with a good many
murderers, and I have talked over the problem of capital
punishment with officers and judges of greater experience
than myself. The result is a dispassionate and unhesitating
certainty that murderers are more harmful and useless to
humanity than locusts, and that anyone who is cajoled into
signing a reprieve petition or supporting a movement for
the abolition of the death sentence is actively menacing our
national safety.
From my own work in the Special Department I have
come to the conclusion that, if hanging were abolished,
there is not one of our major politicians who could walk
in safety from his London lodgings to the House of
Commons. Ireland has shown what the assassin can do;
school-children have been sniped in the streets, old women
shot through the windows of their dwellings, diplomats
riddled with bullets in broad daylight—and all because a
political minority thought that terrorism would serve to
gain a forced turn-over of votes. In America, just because
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237
it is a known and accepted fact that a gangster is never
sent to the electric chair, machine-guns and revolvers are
liable to spatter death abroad in the heart of any city at
any time. Only in England, where an unbribable law
fearlessly orders and carries out sentence of death on those
who murder their fellows, are we free from baby-kidnap¬
pings, tortures and political or gangster mass slaughter.
If the death penalty were removed to-morrow, London
would be full of heavily-armed gangsters a week later, and
probably half the Cabinet would be lying dead in the
streets.
Let us take one or two recent murder cases to show
what kind of man it is that we are considering. George
Joseph Smith, to obtain the insurance money due on several
women, drowned them in his bath by pulling their legs
so that the head was held under water until the victim
suffocated. Charles Fox slowly poisoned his own mother.
Frederick Bywaters broke up what had been a happy
home, and persuaded a wife to help murder her husband.
Browne and Kennedy brutally murdered a policeman who
had shown no hint of violence towards them. Rouse
picked up an unknown man who was walking inoffensively
by the roadside, offered him a lift in a car, stunned him
and cold-bloodedly set fire to him while he was unconscious
after soaking his clothes with petrol, just for the sake of
deceiving a number of girls with whom he had been philan¬
dering. What possible good purpose could have been
served by burdening the taxpayer (and remember it is the
taxpayer who is asked to dole out his earnings to keep these
foul murderers) with the care of such inhuman fiends as
these ? And such crimes would increase tenfold the
moment that the death penalty is abolished.
Idealists say that human nature is all good, and that
criminals are merely suffering from an obscure disease,
TRAITORS WITHIN
238
and should therefore be pitied and cosseted by the rest of
us. Idealists, unfortunately, know nothing whatever of
the criminals they talk so glibly about; they have never
talked to them, moved among and studied them as I have
done. They do not know that murderers are people of
incredibly callous, cool, calculating wickedness; that they
would knife and burn the idealists to gain a few pounds
or to possess themselves of their wives. They have not
met such individuals as Neil Cream, who was executed for
poisoning several women with strychnine solely in order
that he might enjoy watching their dying agonies under
that cruellest of all awful poisons. It is one thing to talk
glibly about keeping this kind of monster alive, and quite
another to ask you and me to pay taxes in order that he
shall be given food and comfortable lodging in a state
asylum.
We are crippled enough already with expenses in con¬
nection with criminals who must legally be imprisoned.
For those abnormals who murder little girls, who lighten
adultery by poisoning an unwanted wife or husband, who
kill mothers or sisters for a few paltry pounds insurance
or who club women and burn their bodies because it is
going to be too much trouble to pay them a paternity
allowance—well, hanging is too good for them, but it is
all we can do. Our Judges are the best in the world; we
can safely leave to them any exercise of mercy that is
really necessary.
Murderers themselves are usually as callous about their
own death as they are over the death of their victim. It is
a definite fact that condemned men almost always make
an excellent meal on their last morning alive; not infre¬
quently they joke with the warders, and occasionally they
attempt to strike an attitude while the rope is actually
being fastened round their neck. Nearly all murderers
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239
seem to suffer from a morbid appetite for publicity; many
of them try to send messages to all sorts of persons with
whom they have no concern, and though all messages are
faithfully taken down and passed on when there is a shadow
of sanity in the request, it is not usual to send them unneces¬
sarily to such people as the Home Secretary, the Archbishop
of Canterbury or the King.
It is rather a curious fact that while there is such care¬
lessness shown by the men who suffer the death penalty,
humanitarians outside never cease from agitating that a
more humane method of execution is desirable in this
country. Actually, hanging is as speedy and practical as
any form of death in existence, and is, I believe, much
more immediately effective than the electric chair. In
America a number of new execution methods have been
tried in various States, but none of them have met with
real success. Apart from “ the chair,” men have been
officially executed by means of released prussic acid gas
and by various other devices, but all of them necessitate
more of the theatrical display which causes so many object-
tions than does our own method of hanging.
In the latter, there is no possibility of faulty mechanism,
nor of the human element upsetting arrangements, as has
happened occasionally in America when individuals with
peculiarities of physical construction have not suffered
anything more than severe shock at the passage of the
execution voltage through their bodies. Hanging is
humane, simple, cheap and efficient, and it is certainly
vitally necessary as a way to eliminate wastage from the
mass of humanity.
The only thing about a murder trial or execution that
seems to awe prisoners is the donning of the Black Cap.
This also has come in for its share of objections, on the
ground that it is a form of needless terrorism. Yet it is
TRAITORS WITHIN
240
not entirely needless; I was told on one occasion by a
political prisoner who was captured while threatening a
policeman with the menace of a loaded revolver, that the
thought of the Black Cap had been the only thing that
had kept him from shooting. Other detective officers
have told me of similar experiences; I should say that the
intangible psychological fear of this awesome piece of legal
uniform saves Great Britain five or six murder cases each
year. Even the humanitarians surely cannot object to that.
CHAPTER VIII
The Chemistry of Modern Police Work—Test-tubes more feared
than handcuffs—Hanged by a pinch of dust—Analysis wonders
in peace and war.
W HEN a man stands in the dock on trial for
his life, attacked and defended by the most
famous counsels in the world, the evidence he
fears most is the evidence of the test-tube. Half a gill of
coloured liquid which has turned red when it should have
turned blue, or which has thrown out an almost impercep¬
tible deposit of rusty red dust to sink to the bottom of the
tube can do more to fasten the rope round his neck than
all the incisive arguments of Public Prosecutor or highly
feed Counsel for the Crown.
When a man is arrested for murder the first thing the
police do is to make a microscopic examination of his
clothes for bloodstains. But these are not the only evidence
sought. Grease-marks, grass-stains, particles of dust, hay¬
seeds, a single thread of cotton, the very mud on the
prisoner’s boots may hang him. Often, suspected men
fight fiercely in the police station to retain possession of
articles of clothing on which suspicious marks may be
found.
A red mark on the clothing may have been caused by
rust, dried blood, paint or any one of half a dozen other
things. But there is an infallible chemical test for the
presence of blood, and any chemist will prove to you how
a solution of one part of blood to five hundred parts of
water or any other solvent or mixture is still strong enough
Q 24 1
TRAITORS WITHIN
242
to give a clear result when a drop of the reagent is placed
with the suspected mixture. No other substance except
blood can give the same reaction; and even if blood is
weeks old and the stain is dry and faded, the reaction is
the same.
Moreover, the blood of human beings is divided by
chemistry into various classes, no two of which give the
same result with a reagent. Consequently, although it
cannot yet be said with certainty that a given sample of
blood belongs to any definite person (this test will probably
be discovered in a couple of years or so), yet the analyst
can tell whether the sample is of the same class of blood
as that of the victim, as Sir Bernard Spilsbury has often
proved in court in the last few years. Again, if the victim
suffers from anyone of half a dozen fairly common diseases,
the presence of the disease bacteria can be ascertained in
the sample of blood being tested, and the probability is
still further narrowed down. And a blood test will show
where a bloodstain has been even when the murderer has
attempted to clean off the mark with petrol or some similar
solvent, for the texture of cloth retains minute quantities
of blood almost indefinitely against all efforts to cleanse it.
In a case in which I was interested a year or two ago,
a watchman in an ironworks was murdered while on night
duty. Nothing was taken from the works; there was no
apparent motive for the crime, and for about a month no
arrests were made. And then two men were detained in a
town about eighty miles from the scene of the outrage.
Both swore that they had not been near an ironworks for
months, and one said that he had never been inside one in
his life. In examining his clothing, however, the turn-up
of his trouser-legs were tested with a powerful magnet,
and a considerable quantity of minute metallic particles
always to be found in the dusty air of an ironworks were
REFLECTIONS
H3
revealed. The man was faced with this evidence, and in a
spasm of fear he broke down and admitted that he had
been present when the murder was done, said that it was a
crime of revenge, and blamed his mate for the actual deed.
Both men were proved guilty and subsequently hanged.
When poisoning is suspected, an analysis is made of the
lungs, stomach and entrails of the murdered, and the results
stated in court. Nearly all the deadly alkaloids, such as
strychnine, nux vomica, arsenic, morphia and belladonna,
are what are called cumulative poisons; that is, they are
not easily passed from the system, and are apt to stay in
the body for weeks after they are administered. After
death, they will remain indefinitely; a body that has been
buried would show alkaloid traces among its dust long after
it had entirely decomposed. The very tiniest traces of
most poisons of this type give each its absolutely individual
reaction; and after an hour or two with flame tests, reagents
and electrolysis examinations, the matter of whether the
dead body contains an undue quantity of poison can be
ascertained without the least possibility of error. Poisons
such as those I have named are commonly given in medi¬
cinal form as tonics, but it is always possible to tell whether
the medical dosage has been exceeded, even though there
may only have been the merest fraction of a grain in the
correct dose, it can be traced and its quantity computed by
analysis of the vital organs.
On the medical rather than the purely chemical side,
a police doctor can tell to within half an hour or so how long
life has been extinct in a murdered body, and nearly always
he knows how death was caused. In recent crimes, there
have been several efforts to lay a false trail by clubbing or
otherwise marking a murdered person, whose death has
been caused by a vegetable poison, and perhaps committing
robbery on the body, in order that the police may be led
244
TRAITORS WITHIN
to believe that a thief has been responsible for the outrage,
and that an analysis of the organs shall not take place. This
is mere clumsiness on the part of the criminal; no experi¬
enced policeman is satisfied with the intentionally obvious.
The analysis and microscopic testing of shoes gives some
remarkable results, as once more has been shown us by
Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s evidence. Criminals who meticu¬
lously clean their clothes after a crime often forget that a
boot or shoe, even after it is washed, often retains infinitely
small grains of dust, grit or powder, and that these can cry
aloud in the laboratory concerning the guilt or innocence of
the person on whose footgear they are found. To take a
crude instance, a murder may have been committed in a
wood where the soil is black and rich. When the shoe is
examined, there may be found among the traces of this
leaf mould one or two crumbs, then marks of brown clay,
and finally stains of greasy black over the clay. The
youngest constable in the Force could tell that the owner
had first been in a wood, then been in the vicinity of food,
had walked across a clayey field, and had finally polished
the shoes to remove all traces of the journeys. If the man,
in order to prove an alibi, then stated that he had been ill
in bed for a day or two previously, he would find himself
in a nasty position when he got into the dock.
One single hair found near the scene of a crime may
perhaps identify the murderer; while dust discovered in
the hair of a suspected man may show whether he has
recently been in the neighbourhood of any particular kind
of soil, whether he has been near a hayfield or in a street,
if he has been in a factory or mill, or it may even point to
his having recently been engaged in a struggle. Flour,
metal-dust, road grit, the powdery dust of a dry ploughed
field, hayseeds, all tell their tale under a microscope; hair
which is broken off short and has not a full root attached
REFLECTIONS
us
to it has been torn out, while that with a shrivelled root
has fallen from a head which inclines to baldness. Colour¬
ing stain, hair oil or tonic are identifiable with chemical
reagents. Again, hair shows quite distinctly the race of
the man to whom it has belonged. The hair of a negroid
type is flat in section and closely curly in growth; a white
man’s hair is oval in section and straighter or wavier than
the negroid; while a yellow man’s hair is quite round in
section, straight and more coarse in texture than that of
the other races.
The way in which the evidence of fingerprints is used in
police work is perhaps better know to the public than the
uses of analysis. The print of every dangerous criminal
who passes through police hands is taken and kept in the
European police records. The method is simply that the
marker presses his thumb-ball on to a paper on which a
little powder is spread, and the record is then photographed.
As no two people in the world have exactly the same thumb¬
print, the maker can always afterwards be identified.
Foreign police forces also take thumb-prints; and in this
matter all police forces collaborate if evidence is needed
about a specific criminal.
When a crime has been committed, the first tests are
always for thumb or finger-prints. A sensitive powder is
dusted over places where hands might have touched the
body, or over places in the vicinity where marks might have
been left. The prints show under the powder because the
moisture from the human hand leaves a slightly greasy
impression wherever it touched. The excess powder is
then gently blown away, and the marks themselves are left
clear for the photographer, for the powder sticks to their
outline and details. Comparison is then made first with
our print records at the Yard and then with the prints of
any suspected person’s hands.
TRAITORS WITHIN
246
Two years ago an old man and his wife who kept a little
oil-shop in Deptford were murdered in their sleep, and the
cash-box of the shop rifled. After a good deal of searching,
two youths were arrested. When they stood in the dock
they denied all connection with the crime, and were mildly
sarcastic in their replies. Then, however, the cash-box
was produced in court, and it had a microscope mounted
over it. The counsel for the defence, who had, in a biting
speech, pulled to bits every scrap of former evidence against
his clients, turned away with a hopeless gesture from the
half-convinced jury. The finger-prints on the edges of the
box were identical with those of the murderers.
As all chemists know, nearly all trades—as apart from
professions—leave a definite mark on those who engage in
them. In forgotten folds of clothing, in the hair or under
the finger-nails, under a hat-band or even in the texture of
clothing itself, may be found particles of dust which show
a man to have worked or been in a mill, a cement-factory,
or perhaps a mother-of-pearl mill. A coal miner has coal-
dust in his clothing, under his armpits and in his lungs;
sawdust betrays the carpenter or woodworker; while the
slaughterer cannot claim that a human bloodstain on his
clothing has been caused in his work because human blood
gives different reactions from those produced in the test-
tube when animal blood is tested.
I have said something in former chapters about the work
of the analyst in testing suspected letters for the secret
writing of spies. Here again definite reagents cause the
chemicals used by the spies to change colour and become
visible, just as in photography the application of various
solutions causes the silver salts with which paper or plates are
impregnated to darken in relation to the amount of light
which has been admitted to them. Secret messages are
brought to light in peace time as well as in war by the
REFLECTIONS
247
Yard, for it frequently happens that information about rob¬
beries and similar illegal matters are conveyed from one
crook to another by this means, between the lines of an
ordinary and apparently innocent letter. In peace time,
however, there is no censorship department to aid us, and
we may only examine suspected letters if we have very
considerable proof beforehand that the writer is apparently
guilty of a major breach of the law, and is using the post
with further criminal intent.
More and more each year does science lend its aid to
police work, in one direction or another; and it really seems
as if we may in time come to a stage when there will be a
few hundred specialist analysts employed by the Yard
and only about half the present total of policemen.
CHAPTER IX
The Force as a Career—I was a Public School man on joining—
the Yard wants brains as well as brawn—Policemen who get
£ 1,000 a year—The private detective business—How brains have
helped the Yard—Latest methods of crime detection.
T HE personnel of the police force has been changing
during the last twenty years or so, and vastly improv¬
ing. There was once a time when a policeman was
looked upon by most people as a sort of official bully,
under whose inquisitorial eye the most innocent had need
to quail. Now, I think it would be more correct to say,
the policeman is everybody’s friend, courteous, courageous,
helpful, ready to serve the community as a whole or any
individual of it, from the wealthiest to the least influential.
There are to-day in the ranks of the ordinary constables
and detective-constables numbers of young college men
who realize that the Force offers one of the best careers of
the whole modern business world.
I myself found my career a reasonably profitable and
pleasant one, and I started with expectations not too easy
to satisfy. I began in the Durban Police, Natal and the
Johannesburg Police, and, before I was twenty-five, I was
offered a responsible and remunerative position in the
Diamond Fields Police at Johannesburg. Had I joined
that body I should have had a chance to rise to a position
in which I should have earned several thousands a year.
But I was ambitious to try my luck with the famous Criminal
Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, and so I came
to London. It is a proof that opportunities were not lacking
248
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249
that I could safely afford to turn down the South African
offer. I had a fluent knowledge of several languages, a
public school education and a good physique; I received
one or two offers to go into business, but those also I
thought inferior to a chance at the Yard. I have had
no reason to regret my optimism. Due to my knowledge
of languages, I was put into the Special Department;
I have told in my chapters on anarchism and espionage
how necessary it was for me to be somewhat of a linguist.
Also, during my career, I have had to escort British royalties
abroad and foreign notabilities and royalties here, and
knowledge of languages served me then, too, while my
general education enabled me to be at ease when my duties
took me to royal receptions, or when I was showing the
sights of London to a royal visitor.
If your son wants a really interesting career, which will
not keep him entirely enslaved to an office stool and which
will supply excitement, a good salary, sound companions,
a healthy life and plenty of chances to make a mark for
himself, then suggest to him that he gives the Force a
thought. There is room in it for men of all sorts of educa¬
tion. The country boy who might otherwise be a carpenter
or even a farm-labourer for lack of opportunity to do better
can become a constable, grade up to a sergeant, and earn
enough to live very comfortably, own a little car and be
to some extent his own master. He will have his house
and uniform supplied, he may get an allowance on his car
expenses and telephone, and he is sure of a pension after¬
wards. Also, he can retire while he is still young enough
to enjoy his ease. He should apply to the nearest police
station for particulars of the entrance examination, required
physical tests and so on; a good physique and fair measure¬
ments are essential.
For the lad who has had, perhaps, a secondary school
TRAITORS WITHIN
2fO
or public school education, the chances are even better,
though of course there is no reason why a boy should not
rise from the desk of an elementary school to control
Scotland Yard as one of the Big Five, granted that he is
willing to educate himself and put his back into the job of
making good. Everyone has to start at the bottom, even
the man from the University, so chances are so far even.
But the novice can mark out from the beginning any one
of a couple of dozen specialized branches of police work,
and try to get to the head of the branch he chooses. The
Special Department needs men of tact, physique and special
education; the C.I.D. generally wants people of keen
analytical mind, wide vision, organizing power, quick
thought and considerable learning; the Force from John
o’ Groat’s to Land’s End needs Inspectors and Super¬
intendents in all the big towns; engineers are needed for
the Flying Squad and for police radio; chemists are wanted
for analysis and microscopic work; the photographic and
finger-print records need clerks and librarians; in fact there
are all kinds of alternatives between which the beginner
may choose and towards success in one of which he should
aim.
After leaving the Force the policeman is not left, as are
men from so many other jobs, with nothing obvious to turn
to in case of financial stress, or if he feels disinclined for
inactivity. For every grade of policeman there is open
some sort of career afterwards; the constable can find
himself a comfortable and trusted position as caretaker,
commissionaire or groundsman to a good sports club;
other grades can take positions commanding bigger salaries
or start in some career of their own. I myself commenced
a private detective agency on my retirement, and it has
supplied me with some cases quite as interesting and natur¬
ally even more lucrative than did my actual official police
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251
work. In that, too, I have specialized, as specialization
seems more profitable; I undertake certain semi-official
Government and similar investigations in which my former
experience in the Special Department helps me.
The important factors to make a success of a private
agency are discretion, confidence, connection with organ¬
izations in other countries, and absolutely reliable and
discreet representatives. The modern detective, whether
private agency man or official policeman, is as unlike
Sherlock Holmes as can possibly be imagined. He is not
a super-man; if he were, he would drift inevitably towards
the Stock Exchange or else found a great new business,
and certainly speedily become a millionaire. He must
have a knowledge of human nature so as to be able to
judge in advance what persons are likely to do and whether
they are telling the truth (half one’s difficulties occur
because people who seek help withhold or misstate certain
facts for personal reasons or out of excitement). He must
have ordinary intelligence, a healthy body and mind, plenty
of common sense, a keen power of observation even of the
tiniest details, ability to gain and hold confidence, resource¬
fulness, persistence, a tireless capacity for work, a suspicious
nature and, preferably, an element of luck in his make-up.
Then he may well rise to draw a couple of thousand a year.
Brains have helped Scotland Yard and raised the task
of criminal investigation to something a lot more skilful
and perfected than anything shown in books or on the
stage. In my last chapter I said something about the
chemistry of police work; other modern inventions such as
fast motor-cars and radio have played their part also.
Radio, for instance, makes it virtually impossible for a
criminal to escape from England abroad; he may get on a
boat, but we can wireless the vessel and also wireless a
request to her destination to collect and return the guilty
TRAITORS WITHIN
252
man when he attempts to land. The telephone, which is
now fitted to nearly every police station in the British Isles,
makes it possible for the description of a wanted man to
be circulated all over the country in an hour or so, and
for reports to come in from great distances concerning
suspicions or arrests. Even aeroplanes may be used when
it is necessary to move police officers from one place to
another with the utmost speed.
In connection with police work also, doctors and patho¬
logists are retained, and on the police surgeon’s evidence
many an important case is decided. This is a sideline
which offers great possibilities for a clever man, and certain
people such as Sir Bernard Spilsbury become known to
the general public almost solely through their work in
connection with the Force.
Radio is an increasing power in the prevention and
detection of crime. Inventions are always being tested
and some are adopted; in the future, the criminal will fear
the crackling of radio quite as much as he now worries
about the echo of the official foot on the pavement. The
Flying Squad, too, is being constantly improved, and
becomes daily a greater menace to the law-breaking classes.
Inventors who have in mind any important improvement
in radio or any other method which can be applied to crime
detection and prevention would be well advised to try
the Commissioner of Police before turning over their ideas
for entirely commercial uses. It sometimes happens that
police use of a patent does not affect its commercial patents;
but the Yard is always ready to pay generously for useful
inventions and ideas, and is often instrumental in passing
on other rights of them to the military, naval and civil
authorities, with great advantages to the inventor.
CHAPTER X
Unsolved Mysteries of the Yard—Murderers who are never found—
Why they escape—Organization needs—Keeping the Force’s
integrity—Temptations of a policeman.
T HE average number of murders for which no one
is ever condemned is something like a dozen a
year in Great Britain. In France it is over thirty;
in Germany about forty-five; in the United States over
four hundred. There is in all the world no country with
anything approaching the number of our own population
which allows as few murderers to escape as we do. And
even of our dozen, the Yard always feels that it has arrested
two or three who have escaped punishment through the
brilliance of a clever counsel, and that it knows the identity
of three or four more who cannot even be arrested because,
although there is plenty of circumstantial evidence and
everything points to the guilt of the man we suspect, there
is not enough proof to bring a case against him.
Most of the unsolved mysteries of British crime, whether
in cases of murder or otherwise, are caused because of
amateur interference or reluctance and delay in calling in
the police. If a relation were dying of typhus, nothing
would be forgotten in the race to bring a doctor; but if the
same man had been knifed in his bed or had died of arsenic
poisoning, everyone connected with him would turn pale
at the suggestion of ringing up the nearest police station.
Superintendent Wensley once said to me that every minute
between the time a murder was committed and when it
was discovered gave the murderer one extra chance of
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*S 4
escape, and that if a body could be kept hidden for three or
four days, there would be only the remotest chance of
detection of the slayer.
Also, the trespassing of unofficial persons near the body
and on the scene of the crime makes detection harder.
If every clue is left untrampled and untouched, it is a
simple task to collect vital evidence. But one curious or
sentimental sightseer may destroy, with a couple of steps
or the slightest movement of the body, all chance of making
a speedy arrest. In a Yorkshire stabbing case two years
ago, a stupid fellow who believed himself a local Nelson Lee
pulled a tiny dagger out of the body of a murdered man
who was no relation or connection of his, and in conse¬
quence all efforts to find clues were baffled. The murderer
was never discovered, but about eight months later, a famous
Detective Inspector in the North, thinking over the facts
of the case, hit on the possibility that the dagger, instead of
having been driven in by hand, might have been fired
from a gun. Had it not been dragged out when the
constable arrived, he would have noted whether the clothing
round the hilt was at all screwed by the twisting projectile;
had it been twisted at all, that would have suggested the
Inspector’s theory eight months earlier, and other clues,
which seemed meaningless at the time, would have fitted
into place like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, and would prob¬
ably have led to an arrest.
One important factor in favour of the criminal at the
moment is that our police force as a whole is not properly
organized. It happens frequently enough that a murder
or other big crime is committed in some distant part of the
provinces, and that the local police, after exercising all their
undoubted zeal, energy and skill, call in aid from the Yard
when the trail has long grown cold. I have nothing but
admiration for the provincial policeman and detective;
REFLECTIONS
2 55
they are smart men, and they are quite capable of discom¬
forting the majority of criminals who operate in their
district. But it constantly happens that a case presents
unusual and puzzling features—that the clues which a
detective of long and varied London and C.I.D. experience
might find enlightening do not bear the same message for
the man who has never met a similar case before. Provincial
men have not the same access to libraries of general and
criminal information; and they have not usually such
widespread and autocratic powers as are wielded by a
detective from headquarters.
In America we see the very faults of which I complain,
and there they are carried to an absurd pitch. A criminal
has merely to slip over the border of the state in which he
“ did his job ” into another state with different laws,
independent police organization and perhaps somewhat
jealous officials, and weeks may be lost before suitable
adjustments can be made to fit together the grating edges
of the respective police systems. The murder of the
Lindbergh baby is somewhat of a case in point. In England,
of course, things are not nearly as bad as this, but unless
drastic alterations are made, they may yet become so.
As more and more competent officers are placed all over
the provinces, they naturally feel confident that they can
settle their own troubles themselves, and are disinclined
to incur the expense and the local disapprobation of
“ calling in the Yard.” People are apt to grumble that, if
they pay for a local police service, they don’t want all the
big jobs done by Londoners!
This trouble will never be eliminated until an expert
central board of detective officers is created, and is given
absolute control of all such decisions. Just as, during the
War, too many cooks made a mess of things until Marshal
Foch was given supreme control, so it will be in police
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256
work until such a board is in existence. Cornwall, Aberdeen
or Glamorganshire should have experts instantly a crime
has been committed in their borders, just as would happen
in the Strand or Piccadilly. In murder cases, at least, the
safety of the community demands that an officer should be
sent from the Yard at once, and that he should collaborate
with the local men, giving them his experience in return
for their knowledge of the place and its people. Local
patriotism and jealousy, the chance of injuring a reputation
by letting a big case be handed over to a London man just
when the clues seem to be working out, the possible cock¬
sureness of the specialist who is only called in as a last
resource—all these things are like grit clogging the effici¬
ency and smoothness of the great machine which should
grind to powder every one of the criminal’s chances. The
grit must be removed and the machine overhauled, oiled
and put in charge of competent central operators.
Already police work has become such a matter of
specialization that there are certain detectives who are
noted as murder detection experts, others who specialize
on the arrest of bank thieves, and so on. I see no reason
why, in time, each rising man should not be specially
trained for one such sideline, and given opportunity to
perfect himself in that alone. After all, most crooks
specialize in one form of crime; we shall always be rather
at a disadvantage while each detective tries to cover every
single line which any clever criminal can choose. It is
like asking a good all-round runner to pit himself against
the holder of the world’s hundred yards championship;
it is better to train a suitable runner specially to contest
each title.
Undoubtedly the finest thing about our police force is
its integrity. If that goes, the whole organization might
as well be scrapped. I don’t want to criticize the United
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257
States unduly, but to English eyes their police system seems
rife with bribery and corruption. Here, on the other hand,
not one man in a thousand in the Force would take even
the slightest bribe and allow it to deflect him from his
duty. This state of things must be jealously preserved.
The essential watchword of all police work is public service;
as soon as individual profit is allowed to creep in, justice
will be disarmed, her scales weighted and her bandage
rendered transparent while her pockets are loaded with
gold.
The first thing necessary to preserve is to keep police
salaries at a reasonable level. They are quite satisfactory
at present, but if prices rise or any alteration takes place
which makes the policeman receive what is only a bare
living wage, corruption will creep in. For there are plenty
of temptations. In a recent arrest of a famous public man
for a very despicable crime, it may be remembered that he
offered to make the man who arrested him independent
for life if he would release him before getting to the police
station. That sort of thing is not nearly so unusual as it
sounds. I was once offered a heavy bag of gold nuggets
when I arrested a man in South Africa on a charge of
murder. A young policeman recently who was concerned
in a night club raid was offered a thousand pounds merely
to tone down what he had seen at the club. To that man,
such a sum would have exceeded four years’ wages, and
no one would have known that he had accepted it. He
gained nothing by refusing the offer; yet, in a like position,
hardly any of our constables would have accepted it. That
is the spirit we must keep up in the Force.
Much of it, of course, is sheer esprit de corps. There,
also, the public can help. Many of the older policemen
to-day have a sort of mild obsession that the blue uniform
is despised by the public, and that there is a universal idea
R
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258
that a policeman is a kind of low, untrustworthy, paid
tyrant. I am certain that this idea is groundless, but you
could not go into one police station in any of our big
towns without finding several of the men there possessed
by it. Surely the public can show their appreciation of the
tireless vigilance, the unbribable honesty and the courageous
and courteous service of the police in a more convincing
way than at present, if the present method has such mis¬
leading results.
They can also co-operate in not offering tips to police¬
men. I know that a half-crown offered for some small
personal service, such as keeping an eye on a car that has
been left, seems only a just return, and gives the donor
as much pleasure as the constable. That is not the point.
In fact it is one of the items which makes that curious
“ inferiority complex ” in policemen. They know you
would not tip the owner of another car who pulled up on
seeing you in difficulties and gave you a hand; you only
tip your social inferiors. Try to help the “ bobby ” to
feel that you don’t necessarily consider him an inferior.
Give him the thanks you would give any other man who
helped you; if you are a girl, throw in a smile as well,
because the Force is notably tender-hearted; but keep your
money in your pocket.
That is the only way to stop the tipping habit from
extending till it becomes actual bribery. If you create
the sort of policeman who is sullen unless you sweeten him
with a coin or two, you have only yourself to thank if he
accepts the notes offered him by the man who means to
burgle your house. No amount of money can ever buy the
service that is given when mutual respect exists.
Fortunately, at present, influence means nothing in the
career of a policeman. If the Chief Constable’s son were
to join to-morrow, he would start as an ordinary constable,
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259
at a constable’s pay, and with all the hard work and all the
unpleasant jobs before him that usually fall to the lot of
an unknown recruit. At no period of his climb towards
success would name, relatives or money help him one jot.
That is a state of things which must be religiously pre¬
served. As soon as the Force becomes a rubbish-tip for
unwanted younger sons and wastrel nephews, as happens
now in certain famous continental police forces, the morale
and esprit de corps will cease to be. And in such a case,
the organization which is at present more feared than
anything else in the whole world by those criminals whose
nefarious enterprises bring them to Great Britain would
lose its power, and become an active menace to our national
security. For a police force gone to seed could spread the
weeds of injustice, oppression and coercion to such an
extent that personal and commercial safety might alike be
choked.
CHAPTER XI
Some Royalties I have met—King Edward and the wine-butler—
Prince Olaf sees the sights of London—Some good royal stories.
I HAVE said a good deal about specialization in police
work, and I think my story would be incomplete
without a very brief record of some of the adventures
I met with in the line in which I specialized just before
the War—that of acting as personal police guard to various
royalties of our own and other countries. I hope no one
will feel that the stories are evidence of Use majeste —if so,
the fault will be in my telling, not in the material. For,
in common with all other police officers I know who have
been in personal contact with members of our Royal Family,
I have found them sympathetic, extraordinarily human,
ready to enjoy or to crack a good joke, but always possessing
that sense of dignity and responsibility which has made the
King so universally beloved.
Several of my memories concern King Edward. Usually
his eyes had a kindly twinkle in them, but I remember
one afternoon, the first time that I was given the duty of
guarding him, when they were dark and overhung by
frowning brows. I was standing just outside the gates of
Sandringham Hall when the King came striding down the
drive, lost in thought. Noticing me standing there, he
pulled up abruptly and asked very gruffly what I was
doing there.
“ Looking after your Majesty’s safety,” I replied.
The King laughed. “ Well,” he said, “ I’m just going
for a stroll. You’d better come along with me.”
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261
We went down together, chatting on a variety of subjects.
As we turned into the gates again the King said to me:
“ I suppose you’d like a drink after this dusty walk ? Go
round to the wine-butler—but, damn it! I expect you’ve
been there before! ”
On another occasion when the King went to Paris, I was
told to attend him there, as at that time anarchist assassins
were busy in the French capital. I was given strict orders
never to allow King Edward out of my sight so long as he
was in the streets; but one day, as I was following him at a
discreet distance, he suddenly signalled to a passing car
driven by a French Count who was a great friend of his.
I was ready for some such emergency, and immediately
signalled a fast police car which had been crawling along
a hundred yards in my rear. As the King jumped in, I
got into our car and set off, meaning to keep as nearly out
of sight as possible. I did not realize how easy it would
be to lose my quarry altogether! The King had climbed
into the seat beside the driver, and the car went away like
a flash. For about seven or eight miles it was absolutely
all we could do to keep in sight of the long, torpedo-shaped
racer ahead, which fled along the straight stretches, and
vanished round corners as if a racing motorist were driving
her. At last, she pulled up as suddenly as she had started,
and the King beckoned to us to come up as we tried to
keep out of sight behind. I wondered as we drove up
whether King Edward would be annoyed at our having
carried out our instructions, but instead of that he was
smiling.
“ I had a bet with Count de-,” he said, “ that we
could run away from you. I’m afraid he’s won. I must
congratulate you on your driving. He’ll go slow now.
Lucky for him he is not a criminal! ”
Continental royalties have figured in a number of amusing
262 TRAITORS WITHIN
stories and adventures, but none more unusual, I think,
than the following. A friend and colleague of mine in the
Special Department, who has since risen to some fame,
was deputed to guard a certain foreign ruler who was
visiting London. At the end of the visit the royal personage
called him to his private room, made a polished speech of
thanks, and finally pinned to his jacket the insignia of one
of the most famous Continental orders. The badge was a
blazing design in precious stones, and when my friend
reached home that day, he had another look at it. The
stones looked to him to be somewhat doubtful, and in the
end he took the badge, which should have been worth
about £2,000 to a Bond Street jeweller to have it examined.
It was worth about thirty shillings; the “jewels ” were all
paste. What story lay behind the presentation—whether
the badge was given in honest error or otherwise, and why
it was composed of paste stones—no one ever knew. My
friend exchanged it for cash, and with the money bought an
exceedingly fine briar pipe, which he still has.
A typical Scots story concerns Lord Curzon, whom I saw
when I was attending a royal shooting party in Cheshire.
After the first day, on which he got a splendid “ bag,”
Lord Curzon went straight to the telephone and rang up
a local fishmonger. “ I’ve a number of grouse to sell,”
he said, “ and I’d like to know what you can offer for them.”
The result was quite a satisfactory sale, and Lord Curzon
came beaming back to the rest of the company.
When Prince Olaf of Norway was in London just after
the War he was most anxious to see the sights of the city,
not as a royal visitor but in the way that an ordinary tourist
would see them. I took him all over the place by ’bus and
tube; we visited the Abbey, St. Paul's, the National Gallery,
Tate Gallery, the South Kensington and British Museums,
and climbed the Monument.
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263
I once was given a very strange royal commission. Queen
Alexandra had received from an old lady in the East End
of London a pathetic appeal for help in the purchase
of a mangle. The writer was taking in washing in order
to augment a tiny income, but could not afford the mangle
with which to wring the clothes. These letters for charit¬
able help are sometimes anarchist traps (a Russian Prince,
just before the War, was shot when he went in person
to answer one such request), so I was deputed to go and
find out whether everything was in order, and, if so,
to see to the delivery of the mangle. The old lady was
genuine enough, and seemed much more excited to hear
that the Queen had herself read the application than even
at the thought of having her request granted. A modern
and expensive mangle was duly delivered, and the Queen
sent a personal note to accompany it. I don’t think the
East End has ever held a prouder old lady than that one
was when she opened the note!
Just before the War, at a reception when the Queen of
Spain (then Princess Ena) and Princess Beatrice were
receiving a number of guests at their London residence,
I was mistaken for a guest, and the footmen at the door
demanded my name. I shook my head, and whispered
that I was the royal detective, but the men suspected
something in the way of a gate-crasher, I suppose, and only
demanded my name with more persistence and in a louder
voice. In order to avoid causing a commotion, I said
simply “ Mr. Fitch,” and was reluctantly allowed to pass
as the name was loudly announced. Princess Beatrice
saved the situation by realizing in a moment what had
happened; she shook hands with me as if I were an ordinary
guest, gave me a friendly smile, and I passed safely in.
When King Edward was attending a royal performance
of a Forbes-Robertson play at the Court Theatre in Sloane
TRAITORS WITHIN
264
Square, at a time when there had been a number of anarchist
meetings recently held in London, it was thought for a
moment that an attempt had been made on his life. In
the middle of the play there was a crashing explosion,
clouds of dust and smoke went up, and all the theatre lights
went out. Temporary lights were immediately brought in,
and King Edward stood conspicuously up in the front of
his box in order to prevent a panic among the people.
When we went round to him a minute or two afterwards,
however, it having been discovered that the cause of the
fault was a failure in the lighting, he was nowhere to be
found. After a minute or two of feverish search he was
discovered under the stage, having gone down there
fearlessly to see what had caused the trouble, and to find
out whether anyone had been hurt!
CHAPTER XII
The Future of Police Work—Modern criminals and their punish¬
ments—Are the gunmen coming here ?—Should policemen be
armed ?—Bad times ahead if too much leniency is exercised in
laws and sentences.
tjk NY book on police work resolves itself in the end
to the question of whether crime is decreasing,
JL jfflLwhether criminals are sanely treated, whether the
law is equal and just, and what outlook the future holds for
us in the way of reduction of crime and increased civil
safety. Making Heaven on earth is naturally a big job,
and depends on a good many other factors besides the man
in blue; but I think that the trend of criminal affairs during
the last thirty years, on which period I can speak from
personal experience, is very satisfactory indeed. Brutal
crimes are notably less; the pest of drugs is being dealt
with; education and social work are clearing up many of
the slum plague-spots which, in 1900, bred hundreds of
fore-ordained criminals who had looked on the policeman
as their natural enemy from childhood up.
The nature of crime has largely changed; the bludgeon
has been exchanged for the automatic—the methods of
Sykes for the light-fingered artistry of Raffles. Raffles is
no more romantic than Sykes; he is more detestable because,
with his education and abilities, he should be able to find
better employment than living parasitically on the more
honest part of the community. He is a scoundrel who gives
the police infinitely more trouble than did the rough old
lag who preceded him as a type; he works with nitro-
265
266 TRAITORS WITHIN
glycerine, chilled steel drills and modern vegetable poisons,
instead of carrying an old sack for the swag and a sheath-
knife for the owner. He opposes the finger-print depart¬
ment by wearing rubber gloves; his accent is faultless and
his clothes Savile Row; in at least five cases out of ten
he takes to crime more for the thrill than because of
necessity or hunger.
Education, as it continues to spread, will gradually
eliminate from the Rogue’s Calendar all except the mental
pervert who murders for thrill or to rid himself of a rival
whose existence starves his lust; the mental weakling who
steals or otherwise misbehaves because he is a little insane;
and the shifty business man whose crimes come into the
category of “ pushing ” worthless shares, attempting
confidence tricks and robbing old women by promising
them marriage. When that time comes—and it should not
be many years, now—the current annual number of police
convictions should be cut down to about one-half of their
present total.
There is a powerful movement on foot in the country
to treat the criminal as a man or woman mentally diseased;
to make prisons into convalescent homes, to release thieves
and forgers on parole, to reason with the men who assault
children and to give murderers a pleasant holiday in hospital,
feeding them carefully on potted chicken essence and
religious tracts which have all water in them and nothing
else at all. I can repeat what I have said elsewhere in this
book—that such a course is even more dangerous folly
than it sounds! For every murderer to-day we would then
have twenty; for every thief, forty; for every minor crime,
a hundred. Men may be only a little lower than the angels,
taking them all round, but I have come into contact with
a very great many criminals who are very little higher than
the devils, whose word is not worth the breath wasted upon
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267
it, who would administer slow poison to their dearest friend
in order to pick his pockets after and who would throttle
the benefactor who pleads for them with less compunction
than most men would drown a new-born kitten.
It is a striking and significant fact from official police
records that the “ cat ”—a form of punishment which is
more bewailed by humanitarians than any other—has never
had to be administered to one man for two separate crimes.
Horrible! Wicked! exclaims the humanitarian. Presumably
he means that it would be better to let men convicted of the
most utter and brutal violence (for only then is the “ cat ”
awarded) repeat their offence again and again, so that our
towns might be filled with lurking bullies and our country
lanes made unfit for any decent woman to walk in them
alone ?
There are other and even more sinister dangers of too
great leniency towards criminals. The lawless state of
America to-day has been caused because repressive methods
have not been harsh enough. That is what it amounts to;
the roots of the business go down to such details as criminals
being able to buy easy liberation with money or threats, to
police who are bribed into shutting the official eye and
political jobsters who are hand in glove with the unruly
elements. But the effect is the same—harmful units of the
public being allowed to commit crimes without paying the
penalty.
If it were not for our policemen and our judges, we
would have gangsters in London to-morrow. Or am I
perhaps behind the times; are they there already ? The
number of cases of murder by shooting that have been
recorded in the last twelve months in the British Isles far
exceeds that of the previous year and is more than double
the record of any year up to 1925. The murder of P.C.
Gutteridge is not the only recent example of cold-blooded
268 TRAITORS WITHIN
killing by lawless rogues. Already there is an outcry in
certain quarters, and a demand that policemen should be
armed with revolvers, as they are in practically every other
European country, and as they are in the United States.
To that suggestion every experienced detective officer
offers strong opposition. Once that sort of thing is begun
it cannot be stopped. Give the policeman an automatic
and, almost in self defence, burglars and other law-breakers
will carry them too. Then it is merely a matter of whose
nerves give way first, and the result would be a pool of
blood. Machine-guns would obviously follow, as they have
in America—not the bulky machine-gun of war pictures
but the weapon more properly called a machine-rifle, which
can be carried and used by one man. The result of arming
the police would be something not so far short of a minor
civil war. As a result of the reprisals of criminals, every
householder who valued his safety would also be forced to
carry a gun. Chaos and wholesale murder would ensue.
It is at present argued that the police baton is a step in
this direction. People who argue thus are absolutely
ignorant of the regulations which control the use of the
baton. A policeman may not draw his “ stick ” except to
repel an assault with weapons upon his person or upon his
prisoner, save, of course, at the command of a responsible
senior officer in the case of a baton charge. Even then, he
is strictly enjoined to use it only on the arms and legs of his
opponents; not upon their heads or in any way likely to
cause vital injury. It happens time and again that a police¬
man is set upon, mobbed and seriously hurt, and he makes
no effort whatever to draw the weapon with which he is
provided, preferring to face the blows of the crowd rather
than the wrath of his superiors. The very greatest forbearance
is shown throughout the Force in this matter, as any
unbiassed critic must admit. Besides, if burglars arm
REFLECTIONS 269
themselves with sticks in reply, no great harm will be
done.
Another recent outcry has been directed against modern
prisons. Honest and well-intentioned people have said
that the system of placing a criminal among his fellows in
dishonour takes from him all chance of improving his
nature and changing himself into a good citizen. It is,
in fact, the Christian doctrine of forgiving up to seventy
times seven extended to meet the case of the money¬
changers of the Temple. The obvious cure for the kindly
folk who create all these humane outcries is to put them
among prisoners, and let them see for themselves what
nasty people criminals really are—except on visiting day!
The pleas for gentleness, the desire to set the robber and
the murderer free again with a warning—they are about
equivalent to arranging for the release of all those nice
lions and tigers from the Zoo, and letting them wander
among our children at their play.
It is absurd to suggest that criminals are a class of
humanity different from and inferior to the rest of us; in
fact we all have criminal instincts in us somewhere. But
it is perfectly correct to conclude that those who break
the laws created for the good of the majority should be
dealt with in such a way that, for their own sakes as well
as those of the rest of the world, they will not repeat their
offence. These people understand one impulse only—that
of fear. They know nothing of love and kindness as a
deterrent to crime, except in a very few cases; they will
snivel and whine in the hope of personal gain, but unless
you offer them some inducement they will do nothing but
snarl.
Places of confinement must be arranged for such people.
The taxpayer must pay for their food and lodging in such
places, but there is no reason why the inmates should laze
TRAITORS WITHIN
270
their time away listening to moral lectures there. They
should work like the better men who pay for their confine¬
ment. In nearly all our prisons, some form of work is
done; prison doctors see that the work is not too hard for
the individual cases, and make whatever allowances seem
reasonable in exceptional circumstances. Prisoners of
unusual religions are allowed every reasonable facility for
following their beliefs; those who need special diet are
given it; the discipline is stern but just and humane. Food
given to the prisoners is tested by officials, and improved
as frequently as may be. But in nearly all our prisons, the
fare is better than that which you would see on many an
honest East End table.
In the occasional prison outbreaks which periodically
take place, the facts of the case are enquired into with
rigour and impartiality. Causes for complaint are removed,
but mutineers are punished. Generous allowance is made
for good behaviour while serving a sentence; all sorts of
restrictions are removed and all sorts of compensations
given if a prisoner shows markedly good behaviour. If a
man really does his best to make things easy for the author¬
ities, they repay him by giving him a position of trust in
which he is very little more of a prisoner than are the
warders themselves.
On the whole, I do not think that there is very much
wrong with any part of our present legal, judicial or police
systems. So long as the sound common-sense of the
country can quell the rabid outcries of the ignorant minority
who call for more restrictions on the policeman and less
retribution for the criminal, England will remain the safest
and happiest country in the whole world in which to live.
But once let things slacken, and we shall attain the present
browbeaten and disorganized condition of modern America,
and that state of things can more easily be made than
REFLECTIONS
271
righted. In England, we don’t want our babies kidnapped,
our women threatened and our men murdered on their
way to the office or by being shot in their beds. Nor is
there any need for such horrors to occur here, so long as
the public will continue to give a full measure of trust and
responsibility to the Force in which I, for one, am very
proud to have served.
INDEX
A
Alexandra, Queen, 263
ArcosRaid.90,93
B
Bacon, George Vaux, 179
BalabarofF, Angelica, 84
Balfour, Mr., 18
Beatrice, Princess, 263
Blackmail, 208
Blom, 172
Borch, Count de, 184
British Consulate murder, 69
Bronstein, Leiba. S# Trotsky
Buckingham Palace incident, 50
Buschmann, 143
C
Camorra Society, 204
Casement, Sir R., 62, 162
Censoring Department, 127
Cream, Neil, 238
Crombie, Captain, D.S.O., 69
Curzon, Lord, 262
Curzon-Wyllie, Colonel (murder),
38
D
Derval, Marie, 30
Dhingra, Madan Lai, 39
Dierksand Co., 101, 125, 133, 155
Drug menace, 221
Duquesne, Fritz, r 88
E
Edward VII, H.M. King, 260, 263
F
Flores spy school, 123
Foreign criminals in England, 19;
French, Lord, 16
G
Gardstein, 43
General Strike, 1926, 91
George V, H.M. King, 52, 54
George, Lloyd, 18
Gorki, Maxim, 28
Grant, Captain, 112
Greite, F. L., 166
Greuning, Baron von, 126
Grosse, Herr, 115
H
Hahn, Carl, 186
Hahn (spy), 146
Hampshire , sinking of, 16;
S
*73
INDEX
274
Hefeld, 35
Hickmann, Heinz, 165
Homke,Otto, 176
Horwood, Sir William, 17
Hyman, Myer, 77
I
Jackson, Mrs., 113
Janssen, H. M. P., 136
Jonas, Sir Joseph, 186
Joscelyne (murder), 37
K
Karpovitch, 33
Kitchener, Lord, 165
Krebel, Helene de. See Derval
Ku Klux Klan, 202
L
Lalcaca, Dr. Cawas, 38
Lapidus, Jacob, 35, 38
Lapidus, Peter, 35
Lenin, 21, 23, 58, 71
Lincoln, Trebitsch, 79
Litvinoff, 69
Lupton, Arnold, M.P., 65
M
MacDonald, Ramsay, 66
Mafia Society, 203
Malatesta, Enrico, 45
Malone, Colonel, M.P., 87
Marks, Joseph, 141
Midget spies, 171
Molly Maguire Society, 205
Morel, E. D., 62
Morley, Viscount, 38
Muller, Max (anarchist), 22, 24
Muller (spy), 148
N
Night Clubs, 219
O
Olaf, Prince of Norway, 262
P
Perceval, Spencer, 19
Peterssen, 112
Peter the Painter, 45
Pickard, Leo, 171
Police Strike, 1918, 72
Popovitch, Mme, 156
Povinelli, Leone, 32
Prostitution, 227
R
Roggen, 149
Roos, Willem, 132
Rowland, R., 153, 158
S
Scarborough bombardment, 130
Schultz, Dr., 108
Scotland Yard Special Department,
18
Seamen’s Union, 60
Secret societies, 202
Segal, Max, 78
Seidler, Martinns, 103
INDEX
275
Serajevo incident, 19, 48
Shop Stewards’ Committee, 59
Silk Letters Plot, 168
Smith, Mrs., 15 5
Soermus,J.E., 78
Spain, Queen of, 263
Steinhauer, 119
T
U
Uljanoff, Vladimir. See Lenin
V
Victoria, H.M. Queen, 19
Ville, Morel de. See Morel
Vingquist, 182
W
Wensley, Superintendent, 43
Wertheim, Lizzie, 153, 155
Westhaus. See Steinhauer.
White Slave Traffic, 230
Wilhelm, Kaiser, 105
Wilson, Sir Henry, 16
Z
Zachiarassen, Axel, 83
Zinovieff Letter, 90
Tobler, Max, 108
Trotsky, 25, 30, 58
Tyler, Police-Constable (murder of),
36
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